Simple

When Annabeth first encountered Percy Jackson, she was certain that he was the hero she'd been waiting for. He'd single-handedly defeated the Minotaur, and though Grover was the more experienced one of the pair, it was Percy dragging his unconscious friend across the barrier to safety, not the other way around.

She was extra certain because he went to sleep for days afterwards. Surely, any feat which required such a long recovery period had to be a truly titanic – well, let's go with godly – effort, right?

So she nursed him back to health, feeding him when he woke, and doing her best to get answers from him about whatever it was that was happening. She was certain that he knew something, at least, about the rising tensions between the gods. He was obviously too important not to. On the other hand, whenever she asked him an easy question, like what would happen at the summer solstice, he looked at her with bleary eyes, mumbled incoherently, and went back to sleep.

The more that happened, the harder it was to take him seriously.

When he finally woke up for good, she was so annoyed by his inaction that she simply told him he drooled in his sleep, all questions abandoned.

And then she had to give him a tour of the camp, and he wouldn't stop asking his own questions, except those were stupid, and showed an irritating, self-centred worldview. Factor in the way that he kept making a fool of himself – and by association, her – in front of all the other campers, and she was ready to strangle the boy.

By the end of the first day, she was confident that Percy Jackson was not in possession of a fully functioning brain.

Sure, he had some kind of weird power that allowed him to avoid getting swirlies, but it was fairly indiscriminate, drenching her along with the Ares thugs who'd been trying to dunk his head. Honestly, that hadn't done anything to get him in her good books either.

The next Capture the Flag was, to put it lightly, unique. In that it was like nothing else Annabeth had ever experienced, and even in her short lifetime, she had experienced a lot.

Percy Jackson got put on border patrol, and, dense as he was, didn't seem to suspect that he was only there as bait for the Ares cabin. The plan was simple: he got beaten up, and Annabeth and Luke won the game.

Of course, as Annabeth was quickly learning, Percy Jackson had a way of disrupting even the most straightforward plans.

When he went sprawling into the creek, that was expected. When he stood up and proceeded to dismantle the pride of Camp Half-Blood's fighting force, that wasn't.

This wasn't necessarily a bad thing: with the Ares kids so comprehensively out of the game, it was even easier for Luke to breeze home across the creek and claim the victory, but it certainly drew some attention away from Luke's home run and Annabeth's plan.

When Percy Jackson was claimed as the son of Poseidon, then Capture the Flag was the last thing on anyone's mind.

Annabeth was frustrated, to say the least. She supposed that it wasn't exactly his fault that he was the son of the sea god, but did he have to be so oblivious about it? Honestly, it wasn't exactly hard to work out: he'd just been healed by the water, and even if he didn't know that the trident was Poseidon's symbol of power (unlikely), then it was still fairly easy to work out. Where were tridents used? The sea. What god would use a trident then? And if you needed any further help, you probably weren't worth the space you stood in. But no, Percy Jackson was just standing there, looking dumb. Looking simple. Little realising the storm of which he was about to become the centre.

After they fought Medusa, Annabeth saw a new side of Percy. Even if he'd needed quite a bit of help from her and Grover, he'd still managed to pull off the 'hero' look reasonably well. Not that that meant he wasn't simple.

No, what made her reconsider that assessment of him was when he wrapped Medusa's head up, addressed to the gods – well, his father – and mailed it straight to Olympus.

So he was a simple demigod with daddy issues. Well, that wasn't new. There was hardly anyone at camp who didn't have some kind of hang-up about their parents. Even Chiron had to deal with the fact that his dad had a nasty habit of eating his children. Honestly, Percy should just have been thankful that he only had problems with one parent. Or at least, personal problems, since the situation his Mom was in probably counted as a problem. But he seemed eager to rescue her. So hurray!

Even so, sending the gods the head of a defeated enemy was a daring move. Or maybe Percy was just so simple that he didn't realise the possible consequences of such an action.

When he refused to talk to the poodle despite the $200 reward, her confidence that he was just dumb was reasserted.

By the end of the quest, Annabeth was finally forced to acknowledge that Percy Jackson did, at least, have some redeeming features.

Fighting Echidna and the Chimera was brave, if foolish.

It might have been her who got them both out of the Tunnel of Love death-trap, but it was Percy who pretty much single-handedly got them out of the Lotus Casino and killed Procrustes, revealing another new facet of his personality: the possibility that he might actually have a brain, even if it was only rarely used.

And defeating the god of war in single combat showed that he was something of a master swordsman in the making.

Annabeth had to admit, even though he was still fairly definitely simple – and even that, perhaps not to the extent which she previously thought – she was really rather beginning to warm to the son of Poseidon. Helping to stop world war three can do wonders for a person's standing, she supposed.

So they were friends, and she couldn't really hold it against him that he was tricked by Luke when she herself didn't see the son of Hermes' betrayal coming, and she took his advice to try again with her father, because if a son of Poseidon could make a daughter of Athena like him? He probably knew something about people skills. And after he left, they agreed to meet again at the start of summer. Because they were friends.

When Percy got in a dodgeball match with some Laistrygonian Giants, Annabeth was reminded of all the things about him which had annoyed her in the first place. Mostly to do with him being simple.

I mean, come on. You see some incredibly tall (some might say giant) weird new students who seem to have name tags which carry names like 'Joe Bob', and you don't immediately think they're monsters? Well, apparently Percy didn't. Which was why Annabeth now had to save him from flaming cannonballs flying at several hundred miles per hour. Honestly. Boys.

Not to mention the fact that of all the other kids in the school, the one he'd picked as his best friend was a Cyclops, who was probably ready to eat them both at the first opportunity. Another symptom of Percy's simplicity (or was it simpleness? She'd have to look it up) was his apparent unawareness that Tyson would turn out to be his brother, despite all the evidence that he would.

He didn't help matters by then being totally insensitive to the tensions simmering at camp, doing his best to upset everyone, and then losing them the opportunity to go on the quest, a privilege which was instead given to Clarisse.

Once they did steal away to go on the quest, Percy still didn't exactly cover himself in glory, sending Tyson to get doughnuts from a hydra; getting himself knocked out in the explosion from the CSS Birmingham; and getting himself turned into a guinea pig by Circe. On the other hand, it was him who saved Annabeth from the sirens (though maybe he hadn't paid enough attention to her in the first place, so the jury was still out on that one), and defeating Polyphemus was a collaborative effort.

When Percy gave Clarisse the fleece to take home, rather than taking it and the glory himself – now that wasn't simple. That was interesting.

She realised that he was simple again when it took him far too long to realise that the fleece had brought Thalia back from the dead, but she'd already kissed him for winning the chariot race by then. It was a very... forwards, move, that she spent many late nights in bed cringing about afterwards, but she didn't exactly regret it. After all, she'd realised by then that Percy Jackson wasn't just an okay guy with some decent qualities she could tolerate and maybe even appreciate. Instead, he was a great guy, and even with Thalia back in the picture, he was her best friend, and he understood people in a way that she could never hope to. After all he'd shown himself to be impressively perceptive by seeing something good in Tyson long before she did. Even if he was a bit simple.

She didn't have much time to be angry at him for chasing after a gods-damn manticore by himself, seeing as she was knocked off a cliff and then made to hold the sky for Luke and the titans, but all was forgiven when he arrived on top of Mount Tam to save her.

All the others had come for Artemis, reasoning that all the gods were needed to win the war against the titans, but while the first place they looked on top of the mountain was to the chained goddess, Percy's bright green eyes went straight to Annabeth's stormy grey ones. In that moment, she knew that he would never abandon her, because a quest cross-country to rescue a goddess? That could be understood. That could be calculated as a reasonable risk to take. That sort of journey for a daughter of Athena? That made no sense. It was crystal clear to Annabeth that Percy was utterly, utterly simple. She, for one, would not complain, this time.

When Nico disappeared, and when Grover heard Pan, Annabeth knew that she'd be facing the coming challenges with Percy by her side.

Percy's simplicity returned to being irritating with a vengeance the next year, as he ruined their sort-of-not-really-kind-of-maybe-nobody's-really-sure-what-it-is-date-or-possibly-not-date by exploding his new school's band room and dragging a mortal girl into it. Sure, Rachel Dare, didn't seem so bad, but for Annabeth, that was part of the problem.

She managed to put up with him through the stresses of the labyrinth, and even kissed him (again) as she thought she was leaving him in mortal peril – but that blinding stupidity of his returned again when she found out that rather than being dead, he'd been on an island. And Annabeth was almost certain that it wasn't just any island, but Calypso's. So she'd been mourning his loss while he'd been hanging out with a beautiful titaness. Hmm. She wasn't sure if she was more happy or angry when he returned.

She decided on being angry when Percy had the cheek to bring a mortal – Rachel, no less – on the quest, as apparently the other girl could do all sorts of things that Annabeth couldn't. What Annabeth could have done better than Rachel, though, was murder Percy for being so oblivious to the tension between the two.

The rest of the quest was hardly smooth, either.

They made it to Daedalus' workshop, found Pan, stopped the invasion of Camp Half-Blood and even managed to stop Nico from being so creepy and evil. On paper, everything was a roaring success. But their friendship had also been frayed because Rachel was getting in the way and because Percy could only see what was on the surface, and so refused to acknowledge that there was anything left of Luke.

Oh, and also Pan had faded, Kronos had risen, and several demigods had died defending camp. So that was bad too. The idea that either of them cared about imperfect families for imperfect people more than Hera did was encouraging, but hardly mended everything. And when Percy heard the line of the prophecy about losing a love to 'worse than death', of course he took it the wrong way. Seaweed brain.

Things got worse before they got better. Percy seemed more interested in spending time with Rachel than with Annabeth, and remained totally blind to the possibility that either girl might be interested in him as anything more than a friend.

Beckendorf died too, the brave son of Hephaestus who gave his life to try and strike a blow at the titan army. And then Percy found out that he was going to die, and Annabeth got angry with him for avoiding talking about them, and then he ran off to go and face terrible danger in the Underworld, and… and… and…

And everything worked out more or less okay.

They saved the world, Luke showed that he was still in there somewhere, Rachel became the Oracle of Delphi (and therefore permanently single) and finally, finally, Percy learned how to take a hint.

When he gave up godhood for her, though, she wondered which one of them it was who'd been ignoring the signals coming from the other. A week ago, she could have sworn that Percy was the oblivious one of the pair.

When he complained that she wasn't making things easy for him, she had to resist the urge to smack the side of his simple head (she wasn't even sure it should be him who was smacked), but instead she laughed it off and kissed him. That was just as satisfying. Maybe even more so.

"Come out, half-bloods," called the onocentaur. "I promise not to harm you. I only wish to talk."

"You want to talk?" asked Percy, but Annabeth shook her head at him, angry that he'd given away their position by being so simple. Onocentaurs – a half human, half donkey creature that neither of them had seen before, but which Annabeth had read about – were notorious liars, and no friend to any demigod. This one definitely didn't want to talk to them, unless it were to do so while ripping them limb from limb at the same time.

"Yes," it lied. "Only to talk." Its voice came very slightly closer.

Annabeth braced herself against the rock which was the couple's only shelter from the monster. There was no other readily available cover, and the creature was ready to kill them should they move from their current position. There had been a pulley system near the entrance to these mines. Perhaps if she could turn invisible and distract the beast, Percy could run and check it. Then he could lure it into a good spot, and -

Her thoughts were cut off by a shower of gold dust landing in her hair.

She looked up, and saw Percy capping Riptide.

"What happened?"

Her boyfriend looked at her strangely. "I chopped its head off," he said. "It seemed the simplest option, seeing as I didn't really want to let it eat us."

She couldn't really argue with that.

When Percy went missing shortly after that, Annabeth couldn't sleep. She was too angry with him for letting himself get dragged into another life threatening situation.

How did she know for a fact that it was life-threatening? Please. Of course it was. When it transpired that Gaia was rising and giants were trying to take over the world, that just made her even more cross.

So, when she finally saw him again, months later, her first act of greeting (after kissing him, but that didn't really count) was to judo-flip him. That would teach him, the simple fool.

In the stables of the Argo II, they lay together, enjoying each other's company in silence.

Annabeth was the one to break it. That wasn't often the case.

"Before I saw you again in New Rome," she asked, "when was the last time I said I loved you?"

She felt his shoulders rise and fall carelessly, not realising that she couldn't see him. He shrugged a lot, this boy of hers.

"Just before Hera took me, I guess. Why?"

"When we arrived, you were so confident I still loved you. You came straight for me, like it had never even crossed your mind that there was even another guy in the whole world, even though the last time I told you I loved you was months ago. I didn't manage that. There was a moment when I thought you'd hooked up with Reyna, or Hazel."

"Hazel?" Percy laughed. "No, it's uh – not quite like that."

"I realise that now, Seaweed Brain. But at the time I was worried, alright? I didn't know if you still wanted me."

"Of course I did. I do. There's no-one else in the world like you."

"But how were you so confident that I still loved you? I hadn't told you I loved you for months. I'd just turned up with Jason, and I've seen the way you two compete like you're threatening each other's alpha-male status-"

"We don't-"

"You do. But I was standing there panicking that nothing was going to be the same again, and you were just so certain. You came back into the relationship like an old glove. How were you so sure, when we hadn't seen each other for so long?"

Percy was quiet, apart from the sound of him chewing the inside of his cheek, a thinking noise. She felt his head turn towards her, and she turned too, looking into his eyes.

"You told me you loved me last August," he said. "So I knew you did."

And that was it. Wait, that was it? He had faith that something she thought almost a year ago was the same now? A part of Annabeth wanted to remind him how her view of him had changed over only a few days on their first quest. Instead, she settled for a bewildered and half-hearted, (but also kind of relieved) jibe at his intelligence.

"You're simple, Percy Jackson. Or possibly a genius. But probably simple." she said. There wasn't really anything else she could add, and she wasn't going to push her luck by complaining about it any more.

That wasn't the last time that Annabeth was left utterly baffled as to how their relationship lasted. It was, however, the very last time she had any doubts about whether or not it should. Like the best things in her life, the answer to that one was simple.

So, this is a thing. Behold! The italics have returned in great force! And they have enlisted the help of their great friends, the cheeky bracketed aside!

Yeah, this feels a bit overstuffed with italics and brackets. Oh well. I can't find any that I honestly want to get rid of, so you're stuck with them

Basically the idea behind this was that I've read too many fics where people make fun of Percy for being dumb, or where the premise is 'what if Percy was smart,' and they all annoyed me a bit, because it's so obviously wrong. Sure, he's not a genius. And sure, he doesn't have this incredible analytical, academic brain like Annabeth does. But that doesn't mean he's stupid. You look at the plans he comes up with to save lives, his understanding of the situations he finds himself in, the ways that, even with a limited understanding of the Greek world, he manages to fit the pieces together and work out what's going on. Look at his emotional intelligence. You'll be hard-pressed to put together a case that he's anywhere near stupid. And changing the way his head works is basically changing the character to the point of being unrecognisable.

So yeah, this is a fic about Annabeth thinking he's stupid, and then realising that just because he doesn't think the same way as her, that doesn't mean he doesn't make a certain amount of sense.

Rant over.

Please leave a review if you've the time!