a needle and a thread

Steady my heart 'cause the patter of your soul

Is spoken in the rhythm of yesterday

There is a hole in Annabeth's heart and she just doesn't know how to fix it.

It began in the winter, when the snow was falling and the air was thick with ice and sleet and rain. She came to camp, her heart blessedly whole, her fingers intertwined with Percy's. That night was a good night; no nightmares, with a goodnight kiss to lull her to sleep. And then the morning came.

The moment she awoke, Annabeth's heart knew something was wrong. It began to shiver and quake in her ribcage. When she opened the door to Cabin Three and was met with nothing but rumpled sheets and the scent of salt, a hairline fracture appeared in her heart because, after all, disappearances were a sad and grievous thing.

A week or so passed. New campers arrived, three of them. This Annabeth's mind puzzled over, but her heart was just too heavy to care. She left on a quest of her own, a quest to bring Percy back - but what she didn't tell anyone else was that her heart was lost, too, and she needed to find it.

Annabeth didn't find the missing piece of her heart. She searched - by the gods, how she searched - but it was always just out of her reach. When she returned to camp, and heard the news that Percy was most likely morphing into a Roman, she knew exactly where her heart had run off to. And she told herself that in order to get it back she'd have to find Percy, too.

She just wished she could really believe it would all be that simple.

The winter passed and made way for spring. Flowers that had once seemed so bright and cheerful to Annabeth seemed to bloom in black and white. Her heart was gaping, a door left wide open inside that she just couldn't shut. And eventually, people began to notice - it really was quite hard to hide emptiness inside you, and Annabeth was just too tired to keep up the façade.

Everyone tried to cheer her up but everything they did just reminded her of her Seaweed Brain. When the blue cupcakes arrived on her birthday, Annabeth's heart just couldn't take it anymore. It opened a little wider, a little more painful within her chest, and Annabeth began to weep.

When summer rolled around her heart was a burden so treacherous it weighed down her every step. Annabeth needed to be careful what she did, what thoughts she allowed to cross her mind for even the slightest disturbance would drag her down even more. The only shred of hope she held on to was the building of the Argo II; it gleamed majestically in the warm sunlight, but as hard as it and everyone else tried Annabeth's heart remained as ajar as ever.

But finally the ship was done. Annabeth boarded, a spring in her step that hadn't been there for months. Her mind was furiously working out the kinks in their plan, running on overdrive all through the voyage. Her heart refused to cooperate and merely waited in her ribcage; an empty, lifeless thing. When the Argo II approached New Rome, however, it perked up, lifted its gaping body because it could feel its missing puzzle piece drawing ever closer.

And when Annabeth saw Percy that missing piece flew back to where it belonged - but for the life of it, it just couldn't work out how to stitch itself back together. So Annabeth's heart remained in two halves, even though she was in her Seaweed Brain's arms and believed that everything was okay again.

In reality, everything was far from all right.

So when Leo blew up New Rome, Annabeth's heart broke a little bit more for all the things she would never see there. And the voyage began again, the summer heat bearing down upon their backs. Annabeth's heart withered - just a little - when Percy suggested a life at Camp Jupiter for it misunderstood what he was saying and was sliced with betrayal. But when it did understand, and Annabeth blushed strawberry-red, her heart suddenly found itself a little less gaping, a little less holey, for Percy's words were a needle and his voice was a thread and together they began to sew the pieces together again, bit by little bit.

And then everything was moving so quickly, and Annabeth had to follow the Mark of Athena and leave Percy behind and her heart was screaming and tearing itself in two once more as she did so, as she ran and ran away from her Seaweed Brain and never looked back. All the thread and the stitches snapped in that moment when they parted, and once more Annabeth's heart had a hole inside.

When she met Arachne, what was left of Annabeth's heart quaked and quailed and shivered. But her mind wasn't that weak and so it set to work on a trap, a cruel, heartless trap because Annabeth's heart just wasn't in a position to help.

And then the Argo II exploded onto the scene - literally - and Annabeth found herself in Percy's arms once more, and just as his voice washed over her so did his needle and thread set to work on her heart. They looped, stitched and stabbed, until at the final moment when Annabeth hung over the abyss, her fingers slowly slipping from Percy's, they finished with a knot and Annabeth's heart was whole.

And so even though she's falling, even though she knows she is most likely about to die, Annabeth is happier than she has been in a long time, because Percy has finally stitched her heart back together and she'll be damned if she ever lets it break in two again.

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.

Author's Note: I'm quite happy with this. An hour's work, and it's one of the first really metaphorical pieces I've tried. Quote at beginning is from Boy & Bear's song The Village, and end quote is by Isak Dinesen. Please review! (Oh, and standard disclaimer applies).