a quick note before the start! the very last section of this part/chapter has rapid fire pov switches and it's entirely on purpose, hopefully without confusion!

It takes three days to finish fixing the bathrooms, and Annabeth doesn't start packing till the last door is screwed back on. Percy thinks it's a little unlike her, because when is she ever not prepared right on time? But then they're off, Argus playing taxi driver, and she leans her head against his shoulder the whole van ride, so he ignores his questions in light of being so close to her.

If she's surprised or annoyed by the way Percy immediately starts making himself at home in the cabin, throwing his things in every direction, flopping over on the bed and messing up the blankets, it doesn't show on her face; if anything, she seems amused, the corners of her lips curling upward in the way that always makes Percy's heart flutter to a stop, reminds him of how much in love he is with this girl. He reaches for her hand and tugs her down beside him, kissing her softly at first; but she responds in kind, eventually hauling herself on top of him with delicious intent, and then they just end up spending their first evening at Montauk between the sheets.

It's probably not what Chiron had in mind at all, but when Percy wakes up in the morning with Annabeth curled up beside him, he's pretty sure it doesn't matter what Chiron's intention was, because she's here with him anyway and she's perfect. They have an entire week to themselves, away from camp, away from everything, and Percy can't really remember the last time he felt so good about anything. Because Annabeth.

But even as he settles in the kitchen to make them breakfast, there's something taut in the way Annabeth is carrying herself, something a little on edge. He kisses her cheek, takes her by the hand, does just about everything he can and more to try and pull it out of her, but she's holding something back. He can't figure out why, because this is Annabeth, and the two of them have long since given up keeping secrets from each other. It carries on throughout the first day, the second, even as they dive into the ocean, and though there are moments where her smile is so utterly genuine she can't be anything else but happy, there's still an uncertainty that flashes in her eyes every now and then that worries him.

"We didn't have to come," he says on the third evening, as they dig out paper plates for the pizza they ordered.

"What?"

Percy fidgets, setting one out in front of her. "Here."

"Chiron practically ordered it," she says, brushing it off.

"That's not what I mean," he says, because he's not going to let it go. "We can – I dunno. Go someplace else. Maybe go see your dad?"

Annabeth looks at him with confusion. "What?"

"I know Montauk's not really – you know, I know it's more my thing than yours, but it's pretty isolated, and I guess I just kind of jumped at it – "

She cuts him off with a hand on his arm, shaking her head. "Percy, I like Montauk. It's fine."

He studies her face. She's not lying, not exactly, but she's still leaving something out, and it goes beyond just bothering him into kind of hurting him. That she won't tell him what it is.

She can tell. Her expression falls, and she slides her hand down to weave her fingers through his, and he responds with a squeeze instantly. "I'm sorry, I swear I'm not having a terrible time. We needed this."

"It's not that. There's just something bugging you," he says, running his thumb along the back of her hand.

"It's nothing."

A familiar coil of anger spikes in his chest, but he keeps it there. "It's not nothing, Annabeth, stop playing dumb." Well, mostly keeps it there, but there's a flash of it in his tone.

"I'm not playing dumb!" she snaps, like she's insulted by the implication, or maybe even just the word choice.

"I didn't mean dumb, I just meant like – we're supposed to be working on this, you know? I don't want to be here if you don't."

"I never said I didn't want to be here."

"But you didn't want to come here at first." He hasn't forgotten that.

"Yeah, at first."

"Why?"

She doesn't even open her mouth to respond. She just draws her lips into a thin line and tugs her hand out of his so she can walk across the kitchen for the fridge. He watches her, wants to follow after her and recreate the contact between them, but she opens the door huffily and grabs a water bottle. "It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters!"

"Just drop it!"

"No!"

She slams the fridge shut and makes her way into the sitting room for the front door. "Just let me know when the pizza gets here."

"Annabeth – " Percy starts, pleading, but she's already stomped outside. She didn't even manage to close the screen all the way, and it bounces open again in her wake. Something stops him from immediately following after her, the notion that she needs a brief reprieve and her own space.

She gets prickly without it, and they have spent the last three days together.

Annabeth hasn't actually been sitting in the sand very long, her legs crossed as she stares out over the ocean, but it feels long, because she really shouldn't have stormed off like she did. Not just because it was stupid and she doesn't want to treat Percy that way, but now it'll just raise even more suspicions and red flags. And Percy has never been very good at ignoring red flags; if anything, he just charges at them head on.

She is glad they came. She needed the break from camp just as much as Percy did, but there's precious else except him to use as a distraction. And she doesn't want him to be a distraction that way.

At least he seems to be in a better mood and place. Being here can help in that regard.

She hears the door open, tentatively, and listens carefully as Percy makes his way down the sand. He flops down next to her, his entire body twitching like he wants to wrap an arm around her shoulders, but he resists. After a moment, he breaks the silence in a flat tone. "The pizza's here."

Annabeth hates the sound. She slumps against him almost as soon as the words leave his mouth, slips her hand through his, and he immediately tugs her closer. She doesn't exactly apologize, because she doesn't really want to deal with where that might lead yet, but she needs him to know she's not actually angry with him. "Extra olives?"

"Of course," he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

And then she just feels like an idiot, because he's obviously been hurt and bothered by the way she's been acting, least of all the dumb blow up, but he's still here and still wants nothing more than for her to be okay.

Except he's not okay. And that hurts her. "Let's go eat," she says a little too quickly, her heart thumping hard against her ribs, and he can probably feel it, but he doesn't push like he had before. He stands up anyway, offering out his hand, and she takes it to pull herself up, keeping their fingers interlocked as they walk back up the beach for the cabin.

Dinner's awkward at first, but Percy has a way of wiggling around that, and by the time he's on his third slice of pizza, she's laughing at him, and the look on his face tells her that's just about all he needs.

Only it's not, and she hasn't figured out what else there is to do yet.

She's supposed to be able to sleep better, but even with Percy's arms draped over her, Annabeth stares at the digital clock blinking 2:00AM, trying to figure out if she's fallen asleep at all or just continued rolling around in that halfway phase.

Percy's sleeping. Snored a couple times, to her amusement. She rolls over to look at his face instead of the clock, studying his face in the dim blue nightlight. (He sleeps with one now, every night; he never really brought it up once it started, and neither did she, but she can't say it bothers her all that much either when she's crashing with him – she kind of misses it when she's in her own cabin.) He looks peaceful. Well, as peaceful as he can be, and she's pretty sure most of that has to do with the fact that she's laying beside him. He always sleeps better with her near.

Without thinking, she reaches up to brush some of the hair from his forehead, but that simple contact has his eyes open immediately, green locking onto grey; for a moment he looks startled, confused, but then his gaze softens. "Hey," he says, like he could never get tired of just saying hello to her like this.

"Hey yourself," she says, cracking the smallest of grins.

He leans forward, steals a kiss, and then she just pushes herself closer, wrapping her arms around him tightly. He responds immediately with mimicry, holding her close. For a while they just stay there like that, tangled together in a contentment not often reached lately.

And then he asks the one thing she doesn't really want to hear. "You okay?"

Annabeth instantly freezes a little, impossible to miss given their proximity. He pulls back when she does, to get a slightly better look at her face. She just tries to bury her own against him instead. "Don't ask me that now."

And she realizes she basically answered him in the negative. He frowns, tries to tug her face up. "Annabeth, don't do that," he says, and he sounds mildly chastising.

"I'm too tired," she grunts. Always making excuses. Even that one sounds stupid to her, despite hearing the exhaustion in her voice.

"Please stop avoiding it."

He busted out a 'please.' At least she knows he hasn't forgotten about anything, wishful thinking aside. She lifts her head, and her expression falls as she sighs with actual tiredness. "Percy, I just want to sleep," she says, which is as honest as it is still an excuse.

He can tell. He combs his fingers through her curls, catching her eyes with both concern and mild grumpiness. "I want you to sleep, too. More often, more regularly. Tonight included."

Of course he noticed. She doesn't know why she tried to pretend he hadn't (maybe because she was pretending it wasn't as bad as it seemed, that it was something they could both get over). Then Annabeth just feels like she's going to start crying, and that falls under the 'things she has no desire to do right now' category. Her eyes start watering anyway, because Percy Jackson is dumb, but he cares so much (maybe too much), and he kind of starts panicking a little when he notices the sudden potential for tears.

"Crap, I'm sorry, Annabeth I didn't –"

"No," she cuts him off, and then she laughs, which just confuses him even more. "No, you didn't – I love you."

"I love you, too?" He's still baffled by this turn of events.

She tucks her head in against his shoulder and clings to his shirt, and at least for a few moments, he holds her and lets her stay there. She's crying a little bit, and even though it's silent, his shirt is getting wet enough that he's got to be aware.

"Annabeth," he says after a while, his voice ripe with concern and worry and maybe even a little warning to please don't ignore him this time.

She doesn't want to, but she doesn't want to do this at stupid o'clock in the morning either. She looks up at him, and his eyes express the same as his tone. "Tomorrow," she offers, though she's not quite sure if she'll follow up on that.

She's pretty sure he can tell, but he kisses her on the forehead and allows her the reprieve for now. "Okay," he says, and she burrows in against him once more. She finally falls asleep a few minutes later and actually stays asleep for the rest of the night.

Percy's awake for a while after that, though. Mostly because he refused to fall asleep before she did, wanted to make sure she felt safe enough curled up against him. Then his brain starts in on overdrive and he feels a little like his girlfriend in that regard, but he can't stop thinking about her and the way she's been the whole trip.

More than that, really. If he really stops and thinks about it, she's been holding something back for a while, and the extent to which only really hits him right now. Annabeth's always been more for secrets than him, and he practically wears his heart, and lately his anger, on his sleeve. But he knows Tartarus is haunting her, too, or she'd be sleeping better, she wouldn't be having nightmares, she wouldn't be so desperate to keep a weapon on her at all times; tiny things he's noticed that she never brings up, but he's always there for her anyway. There's something else there though, but he can't figure it out, and it hurts him, but it's obviously hurting her a lot more. She keeps pushing it off, even with the promise of tomorrow, but suddenly he's more determined than ever to not let her.

She sleeps in later than Percy for once, and he's hesitant to disentangle. But he also really wants to make her breakfast in bed, since it's a rare opportunity. So he takes up the mission of slipping out without disturbing her, which is a lot harder than he's anticipating simply because he likes being wrapped up in her arms. It's a success, though, even if it takes him a half an hour, but he totally counts a victory when she just hugs the pillow and keeps sleeping.

He tries for French toast today (tries to dye the bread blue, but it only tints), and some scrambled eggs, setting it up on a plate and tray with a glass of juice. With perfect timing, too, because when he slips back into the bedroom, the smell of food must have been enough to rouse her; she's making tiny grumbly noises that he recognizes instantly as the Annabeth Chase Wake Up Process.

Percy sits at the edge of the bed, holding out the tray, and she blinks blearily at him while he waits for her to realize what he's done. And then she's beaming at him, shifting herself so she's sitting up. "You're an idiot," she says, but the look on her face is absolutely worth it.

"I'm your favorite idiot."

"I thought that was obvious," she replies, but she takes the tray from him and pats the mattress beside her. It doesn't take much more convincing than that for him to wriggle next to her, wrapping an arm around her waist to and planting a kiss on her cheek.

She eats quietly, occasionally sharing some of it with him, and Percy relishes the moment, because he knows it's probably not going to last all day.

He was right. Not that Annabeth knows what he was thinking at the time.

They go for a walk on the beach, running into the occasional mortal, and Annabeth wonders what the mist is disguising her knife as (it's tucked at her hip, even if she's walking around in a sundress with a swimsuit underneath). Percy's hand is warm in hers, and the sun is warm on her skin. She can tell he's itching to run through the shallows, but he stays beside her, swinging their arms as the tide flicks against their bare feet.

She can tell he's itching to talk to her too, and she's simultaneously trying to ignore that fact and trying to build herself up for it. By the time they walk back and their cabin is in sight again, the tip of her nose is a little burnt, but only enough that it'll be tanned deeper by the morning. He's found a near perfect seashell that he's pretty pleased with, turning it over at a near constant in his free hand, though she has her suspicions it's going to be a gift for her in the end.

"I can't even remember the very first time I was here, you know," Percy says, still swinging her hand as they slowly start up the sand towards the cabin. "But the first time I do remember, I think I was like, four. Maybe five. I found a starfish."

She starts smiling over the mental image. "You totally put it on your head, didn't you." It's not even a question.

Percy grins at her goofily. "Only after I tried to stick it to the middle of my chest. I wanted to be a superhero."

Annabeth's smile falters the tiniest bit, if only because of what kind of connotations 'hero' brings up beyond just the glory now. Pretending to be a superhero would be a lot easier than trying to be an actual hero. He notices. There's a fraction of a second where she hopes and thinks he might ignore it, but he doesn't.

He squeezes her hand. She has to fight against the urge to jerk away. "Poor word choice, sorry," he says, because it's something they've both been struggling with.

"It's fine," she replies, barely a second after he finishes speaking.

"Annabeth." Only Percy Jackson could say her name so simply and so pointedly.

She doesn't respond to him at first, and he can feel a flare up in his chest. He doesn't want to get angry with her, not now, not here, but she just keeps shoving him off, and it's not going to help either of them. And he's tired of that. He's tired of waiting for the next fuse to blow and the next nightmare and the next round of awfulness. He doesn't want it to get worse.

"You need to stop doing this," he says, some of that irritation filtering out.

"I'm not doing anything."

"Exactly! That's exactly my point!" He can tell there's a part of her that wants to pull back, but he keeps his fingers wound tight around hers.

"What is exactly your point? What am I supposed to be doing?"

He fumbles over a handful of words, not sure where he wants to start. There isn't an easy answer. "Not ignoring – things? We're here for a reason. I don't want this to keep happening. I want to get back to normal."

"Says the guy who keeps exploding at people." Almost immediately after she says it, she regrets it. Even if that shows in her face, she can see it in his that it stung.

It does more than sting, though, because it's Percy who pulls his hand away this time. His voice is curt. "Yeah, I'm pretty aware of that, thanks for the reminder."

"Percy –"

He cuts her off, even though her expression is starting to crumble. "I'm not trying to pick fights here, Annabeth. I don't know what I'm doing any more than you do, and I wish you'd stop freaking pretending I'm the only one who's been messed up like this!"

She shakes her head. No, no, that's wrong, she's not pretending, she just – "I'm not –"

"You are!" he interrupts, again, not really caring about pushing boundaries right now. The waves start coming in a little choppy, a little roughly, but he's not aware of it reacting to him. "You won't talk to me, and then we just keep yelling at each other instead!"

Annabeth's hands ball into fists, and she looks like a cross between a burst of fury and about to burst into tears. "I'm just trying to figure it out!"

"You don't have to do that by excluding me!"

"I'm not!" Except even as she says it, she knows it's not true. It might not be exclusion exactly, but she knows there are things she's kept from him. Mostly because she's scared of admitting it out loud. She already blames herself; she's terrified that he might start to do the same, might realize the extent to which she's the root of his issues, and maybe the only thing they really can do is just – stop. Stop being together. She doesn't want it in a million years, but no other solution has floated in her mind thus far, and she can't stand the idea of it.

"You are!" It sounds like a childish exchange (am not, are too), but it's so much more than that. It's angry and upset, maybe even a little afraid. "It was literally hell, Annabeth. We did it together, and we need to do this together too!"

She starts crying, though it's the silent angry kind rather than messy sobbing. "I'm trying, okay? But it's not like I want to wake up in the middle of the night and talk about what it was that did the waking up! I don't need to tell you about every time I saw you dead or dying!"

He flinches, but his anger is already swirling, and it beats back the usual instinct to take her in his arms. "That's not what I meant," he means to snap the words out, but it falls a little aggressively flat. The waves crawl up closer, lap at their feet with a tiny shove, and Annabeth has to move her foot to keep her balance. "Because if you don't think I see the same thing, then I don't know what to tell you."

"And that's not what I meant," Annabeth snaps, though she chokes a little on it. She knows he sees her in Tartarus, just like she does him; it's the reason they have to repeat the fact that they're alive and okay as often as they do. "I – I know that. Don't be stupid."

"Stupid, right," he says brusquely.

"Stop it, you're not stupid," she grunts, almost pleadingly.

"Stupid enough that you don't think I can help."

"Percy." She's crying harder now. "That's not it, that's not –"

"I know I haven't been the easiest to deal with lately, and – and I'm sorry for that," he mutters. He almost looks like he's about to start crying himself, and the waves retreat. "I don't want to put any of this on you, okay? I just – I don't know what else to do. But it doesn't mean I want to be an angry useless lump who can't even help his own girlfriend."

Annabeth shakes her head. "You're not useless." It's practically an order. "And I don't care, I want to help, I need to –"

"Annabeth, I don't want you to feel like you need to! That's part of it! I hate putting you in this position, because it's not fair!"

It probably is fair, she thinks, considering she dragged him down to hell in the first place. But instead: "Will you stop interrupting me! You keep telling me to talk to you and then cutting me off every other sentence!"

He opens his mouth to yell something, but bites on his tongue to hold it back. It takes a lot of effort, to just sit on it, to give her time, to not say anything hot and spiteful. He doesn't want to take out his anger on her, he never does even when he can't stop it; but she's standing in front of him just as mad, and he has no idea where this is going at all. But he doesn't want it to go in a bad way. "Then talk to me, Annabeth."

And he gives her the time, which means forming the words once again becomes a challenge on her end. Her shoulders are shaking a little, and she's still crying. But she looks determined now, more than before. "I – I have been focusing on you, I guess," she admits, her voice strained. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it. He can do this, he can keep his trap shut. She presses her fingers to the bridge of her nose, breathes in a little shakily. "But I swear to you, you're not a burden, Percy. I have to, and I won't let it get to you."

But that's – part of it. She's been so determined, but they haven't made any progress, and she's probably known longer than she cares to admit that she can't hold him up if she's falling down.

And she can't drag him down anymore. The weight of Rome crushes her more every day. Watching what following after her has done and is doing to him on top of hell itself.

"Annabeth," he starts, and he doesn't continue until she looks up at him. "You're still here, with me. And that's all I need, okay?"

It's not. She's not enough and she can't let him get out of control but she's at such utter loss as to what she can do. Her self-confidence has ruined things again. For both of them. It's her fault. Her fatal flaw. Her hubris.

She starts crying more over it, and Percy's face flashes with panic. "I'm not," she says quietly, before he can offer any comfort. "I don't know what to do anymore, Percy."

He shakes his head. He still can't understand what it is, what's bothering her, beyond just Tartarus. "I don't – I don't care, you just –"

She interrupts him this time. "No." Her shoulders are heavy. Her vision blurs as they start to shake, too, but she can't keep it inside anymore. She's terrified, ready to collapse into the sand, but the status quo has been broken for a long time, and she can at least make an attempt to better it, even if it breaks them a little more too. "What I need to do is stop failing at this!"

It takes him a second, but his only response is still just: "What?"

She waves her hand, a gesture at him, her, their lives both. "You. This. It's –" there's a scratchy choking sound in her throat – "it's my fault."

The look on Percy's face is utterly dumbfounded.

"Tartarus," she says, the word like a gateway opened. There's a lot she's kept to herself. "You followed me. I fell because I taunted Arachne, and you followed me. And I can't stop seeing it, and seeing you now – everything that happened, to you, to me, to us because of Tartarus, both down there and ever since –" She has to pause, draw in a sharp shaky breath, because her words are getting more jumbled with the need to just say it all.

He stares at her, processing. Or at least trying to, because none of it makes any sense to him.

But the silence unnerves her, makes her fear the worst. She chokes, because it's all the guilt she's tried to hide pouring out and she feels far too vulnerable. "It's my fault. And I'm – I'm sorry, Percy. I'm so sorry."

It's kind of like he's forgotten what an apology is, because there isn't a single context related at hand where Percy feels Annabeth owes him anything of the sort. If anything, a million reasons why he should be throwing himself at her feet swim around in his head, but he seems to have lost the ability to vocalize anything, completely blindsided by her admissions. He's always maintained that the people to blame for Tartarus weren't people at all, deities wrapped up selfishly on Olympus.

He's quiet too long though, because her frame starts to shake anew. "I thought I could fix it. You. Me. Everything." She's supposed to be able to do that. She should have figured out how to get them back to normal. "But I can't, and I can't keep watching you do this."

She doesn't know what hurts more: the idea that it's her doing in the first place, or the idea that she can't think of a solution. Both of them can be blamed on her hubris, but that was only ever supposed to take her down. Not him, too.

"Annabeth –"

"I'm sorry," she says again, and by now his outline is blurred and wobbly. "I shouldn't have ignored it, but I had to help you, you were just – you're so angry Percy, and I couldn't let that consume you. I won't let you go down that path. Not when it was my fault in the first place."

He doesn't even think about what to do next, just lets himself go with it. Percy surges forward, closing the gap between them. "Listen to me. Annabeth, look at me, listen to me." He says it desperately, taking her face in his hands. She meets his eyes and looks lost, a kind of lost he doesn't think he's seen since they were in hell. He refuses to believe anything she says, because the idea of it all being Annabeth's fault is just ludicrous to him. "None of this - none of this - is your fault. Not what happened, not me. Okay?"

She starts crying harder, makes to shake her head, but he's cupping her cheeks tight enough to keep her still. She grabs onto his wrists, not to pull away so much as to simply hold him.

"The gods tore us halfway across the world, and we fell because of them," he says, the sternness in his tone taking him by surprise, even as he can feel himself edging on his own tears. This hurts more right now, watching her face and the guilt he finally understands but refuses to accept.

Annabeth doesn't believe him. Not entirely. Her hubris made her fall, and Percy's loyalty ensured he'd follow. And now after the fact, it's picking them undone, creeping up behind them as if they'd never left. It's been consuming her so much, she can't let go of it like the drop of a hat just because he tells her no, even if she latches on to the fact that he hasn't agreed with her yet.

But her confession, the idea that she blames herself so harshly, settles into Percy deeply. He realizes his own part in it, in exacerbating it, and almost like watching a movie, he can see flashes of his temper getting away from him, wondering if he really did need to put a halt to it as he exploded. Hadn't he been through enough?

When he looks at his girlfriend though, takes in the shattered look on her face, he realizes that she's been through enough too – and not just quests and gods, the things they were both so tired of when the war ended. She's been through too much that it's not right for him to make her deal with him this way either. Not when it's dragging her down. He's made it worse for her because he couldn't get a handle on his own anger.

And that more than anything else of the last few days makes him realize he needs to. It doesn't matter if he's allowed to be angry – and he knows he is – but the kind of anger that turns Annabeth into this isn't something he wants any part of.

She still hasn't said anything else, and he knows that means she's probably overthinking it, or thinking the worst, though considering the topic at hand, he can't even blame her. But it's not her fault, and he refuses to let her hold on to that.

"Annabeth," he starts, still holding her face, though his grip turns gentler. "We're gonna do this, okay? We're gonna get better. I'm going to."

It's not a 'we're okay,' or a 'we're alive,' because that's not enough. It probably hasn't been enough for a while, but they were too afraid of not being all right that pretending otherwise took over. But it's hard to improve when you think you've already done so. So it's a new promise, and even if he doesn't exactly have any ideas on how yet, it sparks a new, firmer hope in him. That they can work through it, and properly now.

He's definitely started crying too, though. "What's happening to me - it's not your fault. It's not. It's mine, and I need to stop letting myself go."

He doesn't blame her. Annabeth doesn't know whether to be relieved or panic more, but with his hands so warmly holding her face, she lets herself go with the relief. Part of the reason she'd been holding back so long was the fear that admitting it would start the end, of them. She wasn't sure she could handle that, blaming herself for a fall out on top of everything else, even when it felt like the only probable outcome for a while. "It's not yours either," she says, finally speaking. "You have a right –"

Percy cuts her off again, but this time it's with resolution. "I have a right to be angry, yeah." His thumb slides gently over her cheek. "But I don't – and no one else does either – has a right to make it feel like everything is your fault, Annabeth. You taunted Arachne after a suicidal solo quest after she's killed hundreds of your siblings. But I'm pretty sure even if you didn't, we would've fallen anyway." That's how it works when you're working for the gods. He can remember the warning from Mr D. – well, Bacchus, that his journey would be harder than he thought. Tartarus isn't over, it's just evolved, and they need to adapt to that. "You can't fix this alone."

Annabeth breathes in a little sharply. He's right, and for the first time, that really settles inside her, chips away at something tight in her chest. Her hands move, copying his to cup his face. She has her own demands. "You can't – you can't throw away everything because of me. You can't look at me and decide everything else is unimportant. I won't let you ruin yourself." That was part of it. The way he jumped after her without thought. The way he killed Arachne. The way he took all the arai curses. The way he tried to kill a goddess. All of it was for her sake alone, and the weight of that is as heavy to deal with as Tartarus itself, and she's tired of collapsing under it. If it's really not her fault, she needs to stop feeling like it is.

He's quiet for a moment. The only noise between them is the wisp of the ocean. And then: "Not even a little bit?"

It's such a stupid thing to say, but she laughs – or at least, she thinks it's a laugh, a scratchy ugly sound that mixes in with the way she's still crying, her body shaking. The next thing she knows, Percy's kissing her, soft and reassuring and every possible variation of I love you in the way his lips move over hers, and she can taste his tears alongside it.

When he pulls back, they just sort of stay there for a few moments, close and intimate and holding on with something other than desperation, for once.

If anything, now Annabeth just feels ridiculous, holding back as much as she had. But she refuses to get caught up on that, not with what they've just managed to say and realize. For all people had tried to help them, this was a place they really had to find together on their own. And she thinks they finally have.

"No more secrets," he says quietly. "If we're going to do this, and really do this, no more of this keeping it to yourself."

"I won't," she replies, her tone both apologetic for doing it already and entirely promising. She won't. She refuses. No matter how tempting it might be, it's not going to help in the end. And it's not just him – she wants to be able to help herself, and she needs to stop neglecting herself to do that. It was slow to sink in, but admitting the whys out loud pushed for it at last.

Percy leans in, kisses her again. "I love you." He says it out loud, like it needs to be voiced, and maybe it's still nice to just hear it. "I love you more than anything, Annabeth.

It's true, and that's terrifying. But she thinks she can start dealing with it in a better capacity. "You're still not allowed to run away and lose yourself in that."

He offers her a smile both weak and genuine. "And you're still not allowed to keep blaming yourself."

Annabeth starts smiling, and it matches his. She moves her hands from his face, sliding them to his and pulling them off her own face, if only so she can weave her fingers through his as she drops their arms down. They're still close though, foreheads brushing together, and the wind pushes her dress into his legs. Her eyes kind of hurt from crying, and maybe she still is a little bit, but she feels better than she has in weeks. Like the worst is finally behind them, and they can only go up from here. "We can work with that."

"Not just we can," Percy starts, and he disentangles one hand, reaching up to push some of her hair behind her ear. His hand stays there, despite the fact that she just moved it away, but he can't seem to bring himself to stop holding her face. He wants her to be there with him always, but he wants her to be there and be – be okay. He won't keep adding to her guilt, he just wants to take it away. His thumb moves over her cheek, gently. "We will."

Something in her expression melts, and then she's closing that last bit of distance between them and wrapping her arms around him. He responds before even realizing what he's doing, pulling her close as she buries her face in his shoulder. They stay like that for a while, Percy's not really sure how long, but he finds it doesn't really matter.

Because Annabeth is in his arms, and she's breathing easily again. It's not perfect. It's never going to be. They're never going to get back to 'before Tartarus,' but that doesn't mean they have to lose themselves in the experience either. And maybe that was part of it – the two of them just hoping to return to something impossible.

"I love you," she mumbles, and he moves to cradle the back of her head, whispering it back.

It is impossible. But she still loves him, and he's pretty sure he's never going to stop loving her, no matter how angry he gets. That's something Tartarus couldn't take away. And instead of going back, that's the base where they can finally start trying to rebuild.

and that's it! thank you everyone who read and reviewed! these were all super quick updates the last few days, because this story had already been posted/published on ao3, so it was all already written!

and the lack of super finalized resolution has been planned from the start tbh. because tartarus will probably never go away, yo. but that doesn't mean it'll be awful forever either!

also! I want to say thank you to hannah and M (ignitesthestars & hoenn on tumblr, respectively), who sat through me talking at them over writing this throughout the whole process, and they're the best ok. there would be no fic without them! ilu guys, thank you c: