A/N: Annabeth's story written in second person.

Disclaimer: I do not own any characters or ideas from the Percy Jackson series.

WARNING: *may contain spoilers from the PJO series but not HoO**

Wisdom has always been your biggest strength; it's been what has held you together over the years.

Your ability to overlook the bad side of a situation that might throw others off balance, the way you can come up with a plan so devilishly clever that no one will be able to see through it. You can learn about a person's backstory and past from one short conversation or even a look into their eyes. Even considering your brothers and sisters, also sons and daughters of the Wisdom goddess Athena herself, you shine brighter; a supernova among a sky of stars, your mind a spark of pure gold it outweighs any weapon.

It's funny how something that has been so consistent throughout your life can change so easily.

You'd think that a specimen as magnificent, as catastrophically brilliant as your wisdom would be hard to tear apart. It would surely take more than a single handed teenage boy. Though you know he is no normal teenage boy, he is even more of a wonder than you.

Love.

You want to be sick. A child of Athena, affected by something so ridiculous and childish is almost embarrassing. The realisation of what has managed to throw your genius off balance and overcome your ability to stay cool and calm in all situations is painful.

To fall in love: the concept of moving from a feeling of neutrality towards a person to one of love. The use of the term "fall" implies that the process is in some way inevitable, uncontrollable, risky, irreversible, and that it puts the lover in a state of vulnerability, in the same way the word "fall" is used in the phrase "to fall ill" or "to fall into a trap".

Love is weak. Wisdom is not.

But you can't help it. Even you, an academically superior creature with the ability to think conceptually and beyond your years, cannot find the solution. It doesn't help the situation that everything you're feeling is so alien, so unrecognisable to you. You've never before looked someone in the eyes and felt the desire to bare you soul to them, want to defend their life as if it was more precious to you than anything else in the world is or possibly ever could be, and especially never had such an urge to be in contact with anyone else so desperately and frequently, whether it be physically, mentally, emotionally or socially.

Now you feel that every day and you don't know what to do about it. And that hurts. Never before have you experienced such uncertainty – not knowing is not something that comes naturally to you. You want to confront your mother for help, Athena the goddess of Wisdom, who surely would know the solution to any problem. Yet you can't bring yourself to – too afraid she'll laugh in your face or even become enraged and tell you that love makes you weak, as if you don't already know.

You have no choice but to face every day not knowing what could be coming, not even able to take an educated guess because love is unpredictable, it's irrational, it's impossible. Each second that passes you feel yourself helplessly falling further and further, deeper and deeper into oblivion.

All because of that very first day.

The day he showed up to Camp injured and alone and you took one look at his face and knew it wasn't worth fighting it. He already had you without ever realising it. His eyes drowned you which you know makes no sense but you couldn't prevent it pulling you further under each and every day; such intense sea-green that could easily be mistaken for the ocean, crashing and tumbling waves that never ended, the seaweed smell present as if you were standing on the beach. Since that day they've never dimmed, never lost even a fraction of the mysterious glimmer they possess that keeps you so curious. His inky raven hair flopping into his face like a silk curtain; waves so soft that you had to command yourself not to reach up and touch it.

You can't find the reasoning behind your irrational behaviour. Maybe because he is no ordinary boy; he is the son of Poseidon with the ability to manipulate the glittering blue waters in any shape or form he desires, cerulean waves swirling through the air or sea-spray raining down on you and catching the sunlight like an explosion of glitter. He is something else.

At first you know your fascination with him exists but you don't know what to do with it. You become friends. Before you realise it, he's become one of the best friends you've ever had, accompanying you on quest after quest and saving your life more times than you can count on your hands. You make up nicknames which he pretends to hate but you can sense his secret love for them. Seaweed Brain crops up the most and you decide you like it the best – the name makes your relationship seem more personal, like there's some secret intimacy between you that no one else knows about. He calls you Wise Girl on occasion and your toes tingle every time.

But friendship shouldn't be so complicated. Friendship shouldn't leave you wanting to reach out and wrap your arms around him every time he is near and be by his side at all times in case he should ever find himself in danger (which occurred much more frequently than you'd ever seen with anyone else).

The first time you truly understood how uncontrollably you had fallen for him was the moment he didn't look at you as he used to, intense cerulean eyes full of such warmth, adoration, hope, longing. No – scratch that. He still looked at you with those eyes; the problem was that he shared the gaze that you had once thought to be so personal with another and your heart seemed to melt into liquid and then shatter as you comprehended just how little meaning it had actually had all that time. The 'other' being a mortal you felt so much resent towards it almost crippled you.

Rachel Elizabeth Dare.

With haematic hair feathery light and such an intense shade of kermes it is almost ablaze, a scattering of cinnamon freckles to match. Every aspect of her seems irradiated and more brilliant than anything you've ever seen before. You'd never felt such a strong surge of jealously and hatred than when the girl with the red hair became an important part of his life. It's at this point that you are positive what the sickening feeling of envy that has spread throughout every vein in your body truly means. In a way, it makes your head clear a little – it's the first time you've been so sure of something in eons. Maybe your wisdom hasn't completely failed you.

Irrevocable love bubbles under the surface of your skin, hotter than molten lava yet more delicate than a finely spun snowflake.

Love is warm and infectious. It's the plague. And you're positive that you suffer from it.

You find yourself fighting to get his attention, straining your brain harder than you ever have done before, attempting to figure out what Rachel Elizabeth Dare has that you don't and why he has developed such a sense of interest in her graceful presence. Heartbreak is too much of a hare-brained concept that you definitely shouldn't be on the verge of feeling.

Your ugly distaste for a mere mortal continues for longer than it should. Even when he denies his feelings for her and has your back every time there is danger and continues to drown you with his oceanic eye s, it lingers in the air between you thicker than the Mist itself. You hate it.

So you try to accept that she is a part of his life.

It is impossible, or seems that way at first. Her very presence makes you want to dig your nails into the dry ground, rip the earth out in clumps and lob it at her as if you have claws, like some kind of savage. However, you refrain from showing ridiculous weakness and go about it logically – the way that has always been the most natural. After all, wisdom has always been your biggest strength.

Thinking back, the only time you ever truly got over it was at the end.

The ending of your story or the beginning of it, depending on your angle. The moment that you found out that the tornado of mixed feelings that had left you so baffled and lost for so long hadn't only fixed you as a target – he had been suffering equally. You swallow down the overwhelming surge of rapture and revel in the memories. His soft lips on yours, the way you'd always imagined it being, only so much better, so much more indescribably perfect than you'd thought anything in the world could be. His fingertips running across your Camp Half-Blood shirt that smelt of the Athena cabin and childhood memories; it has a small hole in the hem where you'd got it caught on the tip of your knife once and it's faded from the sun. His denim jeans beneath your hand, rough and worn with dirt penetrated so deeply it can never be removed. Then there was the azure sky that stretched overhead, clear and perfect, making his presence seem even warmer to you. When you asked him if he could control whether or not it rained, he laughed and nudged you and told you to stop being so curious. What you didn't realise at that time, though, was that the moment you first kissed him and discovered that all your worrying and devastation over Rachel Elizabeth Dare and getting caught up in love's dangerous web was all in vain, that wasn't the most perfect moment you'd experience. Despite how it felt, you didn't realise that there would be more and more times that you feel just as infinitely, strikingly, impossibly light as if there was literally nothing in the world that could hurt you, as long as he loved you.

And he did. He does.

Like the times when you walked together through the woods, gleaming citrine grass and chrome leaves filling the space you walk through, his hand warm in yours, your feet echoing through the desolate space. Virid green dryads danced by, delicate silk trailing behind them as tiny daisies dropped from their hair. Or the times that you'd sit side by side at the campfire watching the rainbow flames licking across the firewood, warming you all the way to your bones and lighting up his childish grin.

So many moments and memories.

Through the storm and heartbreak and bottomless abyss of pain that sometimes made you feel too overwhelmed to possibly carry on, he was always there to stroke his hand through your curls and whisper reassurance and even though it should have made no difference, it made every single imperfection of that moment float away as if they were no more than dust in the wind.

And the first time he said the words that made everything make sense it was like you were falling for him all over again except harder this time around.

'I love you.'

You love him more. But you don't let on, knowing that he'd only argue and tell you not to be so absurd. Still, there's never been a moment in your entire existence that you've felt so happy to be alive. You don't care that everything that seems to happen in your life seems wrong and illogical and wisdom barely even factors in to any of your conversations with him. Everything is too paradisiacal to matter.

Now he sits next to you, dark hair a mess from training that day, a tiny smile dancing on his lips. You mirror his expression; placing your hand on his jaw and angling his face down to meet yours; an action as familiar to you as breathing. When your lips connect, a fuzzy feeling of electricity begins pulsating through your veins as if Zeus himself has zapped you with his lightning bolt.

And you get lost in the colours and promises and hope you never find your way out.

Hope you liked it!

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~Josie