Hey. This is sort of my take on what happened after Percy left the message on his mom's answering machine. It didn't turn out the way I wanted it to, not in any way, but I finished it now so I might as well post it.

It's been written for a while but I've been meaning to make it post-worthy and non-sucky for a long time but never quite getting around to it. However, my grandfather died this past Thursday and it just made me realise that life is ridiculously finite. It is what you make of it and it's no use putting things off or procrastinating because at the end of the day the only time you're wasting is your own. Laugh. Cry. Write. Love. Live. You may not have as long as you think.

Marzipan.

Annabeth was surprised when a tear landed on the pillowcase she was smoothing into oblivion, so much so that she touched her cheek to make sure she was actually crying and that it wasn't just water dripping from the ceiling. Tears had been coming from nowhere lately, a combination of sleeplessness and worries making her feel like she was constantly on the verge of crying despite herself.

The only way to stop her feeling like this was to be busy, but it was after midnight and she was all out of practical things to do for the day. The nights were the worst time, when the loneliness yawned emptily at her and threatened to drag her into its abyss.

Sure, she may look like she had it covered by day, leading quests all over the country based on dreams and Rachel's hunches and the incessant whisperings of divine forces in her ears but at night, when there was no one but her… Things were bad.

By day she got to be angry, she got to kick ass and take names and find a vent for her anger. Still she remembered the rage searing white hot when she had discovered no Percy at the Grand Canyon, only Jason and his stupid missing shoe. How dare he be there when she had been promised Percy?

By day, with the eyes of the campers on her, Annabeth Chase better have her shit together. End of. It was expected of her and half the time it was all that kept her putting one foot in front of the other. People were counting on her. Percy was counting on her. She owed it to everyone to be the strategist, the smart one, the rational one. That's what people wanted from her and she was trying her best to give them that, even though the strain of holding all of the pieces together sometimes made her want to scream.

Another tear hovered at the end of her nose and she cuffed it off, irritated by its tentative wobbling. If she had to cry then the least she expected was that it not be irritating. She gave herself a mental shake, squeezing off the tears. Crying never got her anywhere; it wouldn't change anything.

Helplessness, the damsel in distress, was so not her, but lately she cried when she was sad, when she was frustrated, when she was exhausted, never meaning to. As long as she was alone, tears could sneak up on her without warning. That wasn't her — she had to be strong. Tears were cheap; she knew that action was what would see her through but she was so tired sometimes that it was just too hard not to. Still, she would never find Percy sitting in Cabin Three straightening his bedsheets.

The saltwater fountain gurgled quietly in the background. The noise of the Long Island Sound mingled with the gentle plashing of the canoe lake, the sounds of any close body of water being amplified somehow inside the cabin. Tyson was out hunting for Percy; there was no one else in the cabin but her.

How could Percy do this to her? They'd just started dating, just survived the Titan War and now this? He just vanished without a trace. How was this fair?

She looked down at the pillow and sighed, deciding to allow herself the luxury of one further moment of weakness, to help her through tomorrow. Reaching under the pillow, she pulled out one of Percy's t-shirts. It wasn't the only one in the cabin — there were clothes strewn everywhere, hanging out of drawers like soldiers that had been shot as they crawled from the trenches, stuffed hastily under the bed, forming islands on the floor. This one was his favourite, though, an aqua blue tie-dye one.

Nico had called it tragic when he had first seen it, clearly unimpressed. Now it was amongst the closest things she had left to Percy. It still smelled like him, like the sea.

She would just take a little while; a little while of acting as lost and scared and lonely as she felt and then she could slip back into her ice queen persona by morning. The ice queen persona was necessary. It was what got everything done; it was what kept her clinging on for dear life to her sanity. She liked it, needed it, and didn't even care that younger campers scurried from her sight, that even Clarisse had started avoiding her gaze. She rode roughshod through days on adrenaline and Red Bull, letting the most calm, most rational, most practical parts of her personality take over.

Woe betide anyone that got in the way of that side of her. Results. She wanted results whatever the cost.

But not right now. Right now it was dark and she couldn't sleep and she was so godsdamn alone. Everyone expected so much of her, but not as much as she expected from herself.

Quickly, she slipped out of her own t-shirt, catching a glimpse of the hollows behind her collarbones and the corrugations of her ribs as she did so in the mirror over the dresser. Demeter kids kept bringing her food; she kept forgetting to eat it. There wasn't time, anyway. Every minute she wasted sitting down to eat was another minute a trail leading to Percy was growing colder.

She had taken to eating anything she could rip open with one hand and eat without any preparation. Protein and granola bars. Jellybeans. Potato chips. Food was necessary as fuel, she knew, and she'd be no use to Percy if she starved to death but there was no need to spend so much time on it.

Annabeth shimmied into Percy's t-shirt, inhaling the way it smelled, and then returned to the bed. She crawled on top of the bedclothes and curled into a ball, guilt burning in her chest. This was frivolous and selfish. It wasn't productive. And yet… just a little while longer.

There had barely been time to settle down into the mattress when her cell phone bleated feebly. Her eyes flew open and she shot upright, fumbling in the pocket of her jeans. It was almost impossible to pull it out from a sitting position. The cell phone didn't sound happy; its ring was half-hearted. Some days, being within Camp boundaries did that to it worse than other days. Before Christmas, when Percy had first been missing and she'd let Piper make a call, it had been fine, but other days it was little better for communicating than two cans on a string.

Finally, she extracted the phone but it slipped from her grasp and hit the floor with a loud clatter. Cursing loudly she dived for it but by then it had stopped ringing. Her heart was hammering in her chest. What if that had been Percy? What if she'd missed her only chance at hearing his voice again?

The display told her that she had one missed call from Sally Blofis. That had barely sunk in when she got a text telling her she had a voicemail waiting for her. Annabeth frowned and dialled her voicemail, putting the phone on speaker and tossing it down on the bed as she got changed back into her own clothes.

The magic in the air around Camp Half-Blood had chewed at the message so much that it was little more than a disconnected series of words and static. Annabeth had no idea what Sally was trying to say to her, but she sounded upset for some reason. What if… what if she was being attacked and she was calling Annabeth for help?

Annabeth's stomach flip-flopped. Oh gods, what if something was wrong? She grabbed her phone and tried redialling the missed call, but the cell phone bleeped. No service blipped merrily at her from the top corner. Frantically, she began to turn out her pockets, stumbling towards the fountain, but she had no coins left. She had spent them all on contacting people trying to find Percy. Iris messaging was out.

Her nostrils flared as she took a deep breath, setting her jaw. She was going to get to New York City five minutes ago or die trying. No one messed with Sally when Percy was around; that wasn't a rule she was going to let be rewritten just because Percy was missing.

Gods help anyone that tried to get in her way.

The gap in Sally's open door yawned widely at Annabeth as she stepped out of the elevator, immediately setting alarm bells ringing. She could see no lights on inside the apartment around the open door and her heart leapt into her throat.

Without realising it, she slowly drew her knife and inched towards the door, keeping her eyes fixed on it. Sally lived in a nice apartment building. It was well-lit and spotlessly clean, with plush wall-to-wall beige carpeting and eggshell blue paint in the hallway. Sally's apartment was at the end of the hallway directly opposite the elevator and the way to it was lit by a combination of overhead lamps and frosted glass wall scones spaced evenly along the corridor's length. The doors to individual apartments were painted a glossy midnight blue. What with all the blue in the building's communal spaces, Annabeth supposed it was inevitable that Sally would have fallen in love with the place.

Annabeth knew that there was a doorman downstairs, but despite the security and despite being in a nice neighbourhood, no one in New York left their door ajar like that. Especially at night with no lights on, a clear indicator that no one was probably home. Sally was kind and trusting, but she wasn't stupid.

When it was all added up, it was pretty clear to Annabeth that something was Very Wrong.

Annabeth didn't want to admit to Chiron that she had a contraband cell phone because she couldn't take the tutting and the look of disappointment this would earn her. That and he would probably try and take it away, and she needed it. What if Percy tried to call? So when she couldn't get the stupid cell phone to hold service for long enough to call Sally back, she had burst into the Big House and told him that she had had a dream (ha, she can't believe he brought that, her sleep was so restless her dreams were too chaotic to understand beyond basic undertones of dread) that Sally was in trouble and that she needed to get to New York immediately.

He had given her permission to go straight away, but followed her to the stables still in his nightcap and seen her safely on the pegasus. Then after that she was in the air, with the wind whipping past her face too fast for her to even hear her heartbeat hammering like a drum in her ears let alone hold a phone conversation with Sally. Even if she hadn't been flying so fast, she wasn't sure she could have dialled and clung on without dropping the phone overboard, so instead of calling once she was outside of the Camp's boundaries she had settled for haste instead, flattening herself against the pegasus' back to improve their aerodynamics.

Now here she was.

Her hand had gone slick on the hilt of her knife thanks to her palms sweating. It was a sticky June night outside and her mad dash from the pegasus she had left on the curb without even pausing at a parking meter had made her hot. The humidity clung to her and the adrenaline only made things worse. Hissing a curse, she put the blade of her knife between her teeth briefly and wiped her hands on her jeans before taking up her knife again.

What if Sally had been attacked? Would a monster go after Percy's mother just to get to Percy? Sally did have the Sight but no one knew where Percy was. What good would it do attacking Sally to get revenge on Percy if he wasn't around to find out about it? Assuming Percy was as off the radar for monsters as for the rest of them, it wouldn't even make sense that a monster would kidnap Sally to use her as bait. Not only did most monsters think that mortals were of little to no benefit them, but how were they expecting to lure Percy if he was AWOL, assumedly running around with as killer a case of amnesia as Jason's? It just didn't make sense.

Her mouth set into a thin line. No, a monster might not want to hurt Sally but Gaia might. Gaia had killed Leo's mom after all and kidnapped Piper's dad just to prevent them from fulfilling their destinies. How was Sally any different?

She was still edging forwards towards the apartment door, her eyes sliding left and right to look for any possible booby traps. Each step involved a tentative tap of the carpet in front of her with a foot first, just in case something was hidden there that she might trigger. She wanted to get to Sally as quickly as possible (assuming she was still inside the apartment) but it would do Sally no good if Annabeth was captured or maimed or killed riding in for the rescue.

Gods, she really hoped that there was no one looking out of their peepholes right now at her — she was practically crab-stepping down the hallway, testing every floorboard like a certifiable lunatic. They'd probably think she was losing her mind and call the men in white coats. Just what she needed.

The door got closer and its open maw seemed to gather her vision to it. She wanted to know desperately what was behind it but all she saw was the darkness sucking in all of her concentration. Vivid pictures sprang up in her mind of what she might see inside the apartment; now the thought of Sally lying helpless, beaten and broken, were doing a grisly tango with all of the images of Percy in the same condition she had spent the last 6 months picturing.

She didn't need her brain to fill in blanks for her like that but it was inevitable. That was just the way her brain worked, racing ahead of her to come up with all sorts of possibilities. Last thing at night it was the worst. She would lie in the dark and will her brain to just stop churning and let her sleep but all she could think about was Percy and where he might be, if he was in the hands of Gaia's minions being tortured, if he wasn't just lying dead in a ditch somewhere…

Under Drew's counsellorship, when they only knew a fraction of what they knew now, children of Aphrodite had already begun to think it was funny to leave her creams and ointments for eyebags, so bad was her sleep. Her sleep (and the accompanying bags) had become much worse since. Piper had firmly stamped that behaviour out, thank Zeus, but Jason's arrival at Camp and his quest with Leo and Piper had really only brought more questions than answers when it came to Percy's disappearance. It had answered a lot of their questions about what was happening, about Gaia, but it hadn't lead them to Percy.

Sleep was rarely on her agenda, at least not for a whole night. She was plagued by fuzzy dreams, catching snatches of what might be Percy but she couldn't be sure, like she was watching a TV with Minnesota's entire dose of winter snow on the screen. Ever since Percy had been missing she had been on edge, mostly because he was gone but also because part of her knew that it was only the beginning. Gaia was rising and although the edges of the wound left when Percy had been gouged out of her life were still raw she couldn't ignore that there was a bigger picture. War was coming, and soon.

She and Percy had already survived one war, beating all the odds. She wasn't stupid — she knew how odds worked. Who was to say that either of them would be so lucky a second time? That any of them would be so lucky a second time? Piper, Leo, Jason, Butch, Clarisse, Katie, Clovis, the Stolls and everyone else she knew and cared about at Camp Half-Blood… could any of them really go into battle and cheat death a second time around?

The losses the last time had been so great — Beckendorf, Silena, Michael and the rest who had given their lives to protect Olympus from the Titans were gone and now this? The Giants, Gaia? How was that fair? Everyone was still recovering mentally from the last battle. Everyone who had survived had been left with emotional scars carved deep into their psyches and the hard part wasn't even halfway over.

The hallway appeared to be clear of traps. Now she was at the door she nudged it gently with her foot, kicking it open just wide enough for her to squeeze through. The apartment beyond was in almost total darkness. Annabeth had come to know the place pretty well in all of her evenings spent here with Sally. Somehow, it was almost as if they were the only two people in the world who understood how the other felt about Percy being missing.

When you entered the apartment, you were immediately in a hallway with hardwood floors. Even though it was dark, Annabeth pictured in her mind the doors on either side of the hall, leading to the bedrooms and the bathroom. Sally normally kept them closed and Annabeth, reaching the first door on the right, groped into the darkness and found that nothing had changed tonight.

There was a warm, humid breeze wafting lazily and almost imperceptibly through the apartment from the door next to the window that lead out to the balcony. Lace curtains fluttered listlessly in the doorway, the stillness of the night air barely making them stir. The silence in the apartment was eerie and punctuated with the distance sounds of the city.

The hallway Annabeth was in was too narrow for a lot of furniture, but Annabeth remembered that there was a freestanding coatrack behind the door on the left side. Next to it, there a particularly large reproduction Greek volute krater (or was it a reproduction, because Annabeth had never seen such an intricate and authentic-looking sample without an alarmed glass case intervening between them, so perhaps it was a gift from Poseidon) which Sally used to store umbrellas and Paul's (mostly rusty) sword collection.

The light switches were somewhere on that wall, behind the swords and umbrellas and coats. She didn't know the apartment so well that she could trust herself not to fumble for them and send everything crashing to the ground which, besides possibly shattering an example of Greek pottery that could be the best part of two-and-a-half millennia old, would immediately give her away before she even got the lights on to defend herself.

Not that Annabeth could defend herself if it was Gaia who had got to Sally, even if the worst Gaia did was rock up in person and invite Annabeth to stay for tea and (metamorphic) rock cakes. Gaia might be sleeping but she could still make her presence known if needs be and Annabeth knew there was no way she would win that fight, or even against one of the Giants. She was just one lowly demigod in the path of an ancient and unstoppable deity and besides, the only way Annabeth could think of defending herself against mother freaking nature herself was by buying an SUV and running the engine until the ice caps melted, and even that would probably just piss Gaia off more than anything. Also, it wouldn't really be fair to the polar bears, but it was either that or filling Tartarus with empty water bottles and those plastic rings that held six-packs together and neither plan sounded good.

The only choice Annabeth had was to go out fighting with the faith that it would exactly what Percy would do to protect his mom. Crashing around and then dying in the dark anyway wasn't her style. Fighting was the way to go, with the element of surprise being helpful if she could keep it.

So instead of reaching for the lights she crept forward down the hall. She was kidding herself really to think that nothing sinister would notice that she was there — a monster could smell her a mile off, anyway, and it was likely to be monster minions that Gaia was using, not being strong enough herself. Still, all seemed quiet in the apartment and there seemed to be little point in giving herself away if she didn't absolutely have to so she stayed quiet and in the dark

Her eyes were gradually adjusting to the gloom anyway, enough to see that the rest of the doors off the hall were closed. There was plenty of light filtering in from the large window opposite the hallway, the one that illuminated the kitchen and living room, for her to see by.

The main living area that opened off the narrow hallway looked all the more cavernous in comparison. To the left of the room was the kitchen, grouped around a centre island-cum-breakfast bar, with a dining area next to the kitchen. The light coming in the window gleamed on the spotless granite surfaces and the stainless steel sink and appliances, as well as on the flawless shine of the wooden dining table. Since Percy had been missing, Sally had scrubbed and buffed and polished the whole apartment time and time again until her hands were red raw and her nails flaky from cleaning products.

To the right of the room, a couch and various comfortable, squashy but mismatched armchairs were arranged in a horseshoe facing the apartment's outside wall and the fireplace built into it. The grate was cold and dark. Above that, a flatscreen TV was hung, its screen as cold and dark as the fireplace.

The whole apartment was crammed with bookcases overflowing with books. Framed pictures, no two frames matching, littered every available flat service, as did souvenirs from various trips Sally and Paul had taken together. All were meticulously dusted, the glass in the frames gleaming. Spider plants trailed from the tops of bookcases and there were orchids blooming on the windowsill.

Annabeth was about to leave the hallway when her foot squelched in something on the hardwood floor. She almost lost her footing, only managing to save herself by grabbing at the end table that held a cordless phone and a lamp, almost knocking them both flying.

So much for stealth.

Whatever she had stood in was sticky and her stomach clenched unpleasantly. It gleamed darkly and wetly in the dim light, looking exactly like blood. Oh gods. There was a widening pool of it oozing thickly across the floor, too much to be survivable. She bent down and placed her fingers in the puddle. It was cold to the touch. Old. It must have been lying there for hours.

Screw the element of surprise. This was bad. Annabeth swallowed and turned on the lamp on the table.

The pool of light fell on not the dark puddle of blood she was expecting but on a ruined grocery bag. She blinked in surprise before stepping over the mess. Looping her hair behind her ears she crouched down, facing the door, to get a better look.

The paper bag was saturated and torn. A glass jar of mayonnaise had exploded when it hit the floor; it was spattered in all directions and had dripped greasily down the wall and onto the baseboard. Yolks of broken eggs wobbled up at her from the floor; their whites were liberally coating a can of furniture polish. The pool she had stepped in was not blood but a tub of Rocky Road ice cream which had almost entirely melted.

"Hello?" Annabeth called, slowly rising. Just because it wasn't blood didn't mean that something hadn't got to Sally. Why else would she drop a bag of groceries and not clear it up?

"Annabeth." The voice was cracked and strangled and scared the crap out of Annabeth. It had come from the balcony doorway behind her.

Annabeth whirled around, her heart hammering, nearly slipping again on the mess. Sally had appeared in the doorway to the balcony and crossed to the light switches in the kitchen, flicking on the lights. They illuminated eyebags twins of Annabeth's own and eyes red and puffy from crying. Sally was clutching the cordless phone to her chest and it looked as if she were trembling. Her cheeks still glimmered wetly.

Annabeth's heart plunged to her shoes. All the more convenient for doing an Irish jig on it, which is about what she felt like was happening. Sally was alone in the dark. Crying. Cradling the phone to her chest like a newborn baby. There had been news, and not the kind Annabeth had been waiting for.

"Percy," Annabeth said immediately. The fight went out of her and she drained almost instantly, slumping against the wall and sliding down. Hot tears prickled at the back of her own eyes, for the second time that evening. This was it, the moment she had been dreading. The moment she would be told that Percy wasn't ever coming home, that she'd never see him again. "What… what happened?"

Sally let out a new sob, but at the same time her face split into a beaming smile. "He's okay," she said hoarsely, dabbing at her nose with a tissue she had produced from up her sleeve. "Annabeth, he's okay."

Annabeth's brain didn't process it right away. She could practically see the little eggtimer flipping over and over, her mind churning like a computer without enough RAM. Percy… was… fine? That did not compute. This whole time — these months — he'd been gone she'd been so busy preparing herself for the worst, to be told that he was never coming back, that she had forgotten to prepare herself for good news.

That was a huge oversight on her part, being a child of Athena, but she had never thought that she'd actually get her happily ever after. In a way, she'd found it easier to believe somehow that she was going to lose Percy and be miserable for the rest of her life because that seemed to be the tried and tested way with heroes across the millennia. Surely happy heroes were a crazier notion than a tragic love story and a broken heart?

It wasn't that she wanted Percy to be gone forever, gods no, but it was just that hope for the best, expect the worst had become her motto over the past few months. Statistically, she had a number of grisly options that were likely to take place. She would either end up marooned on a desert island or kill her kids and her ex's new lover and fly off on a chariot pulled by dragons or something equally depressing, doomed to repeat the crashing and burning that had happened over the millennia when heroes and love became intertwined.

As much as it hurt, as many sleepless nights and angry tears as it cost her, it had always been present: Percy might never come home.

Annabeth Chase was nothing if not pragmatic.

Not that Annabeth had never planned to fully admit to it or give into that line of thinking. It had been present as a very real possibility but it wouldn't stop her. She had been prepared walk the planet to the day she died looking for Percy, searching every face in every crowd. If it were up to her, no stone would be left unturned looking for him. She could fix it all if she were smart enough, if she could just work out where to look for him, what had happened, and she had been trying to do just that.

And now she was being told that he was okay?

Her brain was still having trouble taking it in. Error, error. Systems failure. This program, Annabeth's , has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. "He's… he's… what?" she stuttered.

She could barely make her mouth move around the shock. Sally was meant to be telling her that they'd found Percy's body, that he was in some morgue somewhere covered in a white sheet and a toe tag deeming him John Doe until they went to ID him. That's what she'd been prepared for when she had seen Sally crying so hard with the phone. Already she had felt herself hardening inside to protect herself from the brunt of the impact. She had been ready to parry the blow and stay strong for Sally's sake, to hold it together for just long enough so that she could fall to pieces in private.

And now… this?

"I know," Sally choked out, a hysterical laugh bubbling up in her throat. She walked over to Annabeth and reached out a hand to Annabeth, helping her to her feet, then lead Annabeth over to the couch. Sally sat down and pulled another Kleenex out of a box on an end table and dabbed at her face. "I'm sorry for all this. I'm just so happy…"

As dazed as she was, Annabeth recognised that the apartment had been devoid of laughter for so long now that it sounded so alien to hear it, as if the apartment had forgotten what it was like and was reeling in shock. It had been too full of shared tears and worry and sleepless nights spend huddled over cups of tea with pictures of a grinning Percy winking out at them from behind glass on every surface. Now that there was laughter, something to celebrate, it was as if the whole place had taken a breath it had been holding for the longest time.

"Is this real?" Annabeth asked dazedly, because if anything the last few months had taught her that life had a habit of turning around and kicking you when you least expected it. Maybe she was dreaming; that would certainly fit.

"Yes! Can you believe it?" Sally continued as she settled down. "He's okay. I came back from getting the groceries and the machine was flashing so I pressed the button and his voice, Annabeth, I heard him and…" She couldn't finish, instead unleashing another wild laugh with reckless abandon.

"Dropped the groceries," Annabeth filled in for her, glancing back over her shoulder at the mess in the entryway. Sally hadn't been attacked. She'd heard Percy's voice and just been so overwhelmed she hadn't even thought to close the front door or turn on the lights. Annabeth didn't blame her. "Why were you shopping so late?"

Sally blinked at her and then looked past Annabeth to the spattered heap. "Oh… Huh. I couldn't sleep," she said. "There's this all night grocery I used to go to when Gabe would wake me up in the middle of the night and tell me we were out of beer. I was going to stay up and bake something. You know, I didn't even notice… That's going to stain. It's going to stain and I could not care less if I tried." She was smiling again, creases appearing at the corners of her eyes that had long been absent.

The initial elation was wearing off now and Annabeth relaxed exhaustedly into the couch in a way she had been unable to for the longest time. It was like she had been a coiled spring for all this time, the pressure of trying to find Percy weighing her down, and now she knew he was okay she had sprung up in elation but now all she wanted to do was rest after living under that weight for so many months.

"I had to get some air. I thought I was going to pass out," Sally said. "I called Paul; he's coming home from his playwriting retreat. I practically had to force him to go to get some normalcy back and now I'm calling him and telling him to come home. Heh. But he's on his way. I tried calling you, Annabeth, but you had no service."

"I was at Camp," Annabeth said. "I got your voicemail, just about. I thought… it doesn't matter."

Sally looked abashed. "I scared you," she said. "I'm sorry, Annabeth. I didn't think…"

"It doesn't matter," Annabeth said. Elation was making her feel dizzy. "What did Percy say?"

Again Sally grinned and her thumb worked on the cordless phone's keypad. Percy's voice coming out of the speaker made Annabeth's skin feel alive with electricity. All she wanted was to hug him and be hugged by him, to know that everything was going to be okay.

"Mom," Percy said. "Hey, I'm alive. Hera—"

"I knew it!" Annabeth shrieked, her eyes flashing stormily at the handset. Her hands immediately balled into fists, her face twisting in dislike. "I knew that two-timing goddess would have something to do with this. Who does she think she is, messing with our lives like that? I tell you, the next time I see her—"

Thunder rumbled directly overhead and the lights dimmed, buzzing ominously, but Annabeth's nostrils only flared in response.

"Oh you rumble away," she snarled at the ceiling, the blood draining from her face in her anger. Her voice was low and tight. "Sure, you haven't been down to see any of us in months even though the Giants have risen and Gaia is trying to destroy humanity but please go on, rumble away in your righteous indignation. How dare we mere mortals, who are always stuck cleaning up the gods' mess, badmouth the almighty—"

Sally reached out and put a hand over Annabeth's. "I don't think my insurance covers me against lightning strikes," she said quietly.

Annabeth pursed her lips, trying to keep in the curses she wanted to shout out of the flung-open windows. "It makes me so angry," she said, her voice tiny as she fought to keep her emotions in check. "All of this time, Sally, all of this time we've been sitting in these seats not knowing… I Googled sea burials, you know that? Just checking the options in case… in case we had to do something with the body. I thought he might like that more, somehow. And this whole time she knew and did nothing."

Sally gave a long sigh and drew Annabeth's hand into her lap. It took her a while to gather her thoughts before she spoke. "Annabeth, sweetie… I may not know much about this but I do know that it's not for us to question their will. You have been telling me that Gaia is rising, getting ready to destroy the human race. I am just as angry as you are with Hera but understand two things. Firstly, time is meaningless to them; they live forever. Poseidon would turn up after years and it was like he thought he'd just quickly run to the shops, like Gone for milk, be back in 10. He was always surprised to see me age. The time Percy has been missing is a snap of the fingers to them. Less, even. That doesn't excuse what has happened but it's something to bear in mind.

"And secondly… I have spent so many nights wondering if Percy will ever come home but I know that he's a hero and sometimes you have to do dangerous things. I hate it, believe me, and it destroys me every time I think about it but if what he does saves the world… then perhaps our pain was worth it. All a mother wants is to see their child grow up happy. If the world ends, I get no chance at all of seeing that. At the end of it all, I would gladly trade those future years of happiness without an apocalypse for these few months of pain. As much as they've sucked. I am angry, Annabeth, so angry. In fact, I don't think I have ever been this angry. But when I think about it, these past few months, although they've taken me to hell and back over and over again, they've made me a stronger person. And if it means the world is saved and every mother on this planet gets to see their children grow up happy… I think I can make the sacrifice."

Annabeth exhaled, letting the anger out slowly with her breath. Perhaps Sally was right, especially about the last few months making her stronger. Annabeth had got a lot tougher in a lot of ways since Percy had been missing; it was something she might need later. And if Percy's disappearance, his switch with Jason, was indeed the catalyst necessary to unite the two demigod factions to take on the Giants and Gaia together… then maybe Sally was right and it had been worth it. If they saved the world then there was a chance she could have a normal(ish) life with Percy, grow old with him… wasn't that worth it? What she wanted?

"Okay," Annabeth said quietly, nodding. Her hatred of Hera had only been magnified a million times now her suspicions had been confirmed but she could deal with that later. "I'm sorry. Play the rest of the message."

"Mom," Percy's voice said again once Sally restarted the message, and once more Annabeth felt herself tingling. "Hey, I'm alive. Hera put me to sleep for a while, and then she took my memory, and…"

The way Percy was stumbling over his words, the way his voice was faltering, made Annabeth's chest ache. He sounded so lost and confused. She wondered what it was like to lose your memories, to know next to nothing about who you were. Did he even remember her at all?

"Anyway, I'm okay. I'm sorry. I'm on a quest—" Again Percy's voice broke off and Annabeth could practically see him wincing, the guilt of having mentioned the Q word and frightening his mom palpable in his face. "I'll make it home, I promise. Love you."

There was a click as he hung up and then that was it. The last two words hung in the air, shimmering like the aftereffect of a firework before slowly dissipating. The apartment suddenly felt a lot colder and a lot lonelier without Percy's voice there to fill it.

"He better make it home," Annabeth said fiercely, breaking the contemplative silence that had settled over them.

"He promised," Sally said simply, placing the phone on the coffee table. "So he will."

"If he doesn't, I am going to kick his ass," Annabeth said with a snort. "Actually, you know what? I'm going to kick his ass even if he does make it back. 'I'm sorry'?! That's the weak line we get?" Her head was running through the moves necessary for one particular aikido throw in particular which she could use to send Percy flying over her shoulder. He left her and all she got was "I'm sorry"? Not cool; she would have to make that known.

But he was alive and that was the main thing. She had got to hear him and he was okay, in his own words. She had every faith that he would make it home because, like Sally, she knew that if Percy promised something then it would happen. And even if he didn't make it to them, she was going to haul her ass cross country to make it to him anyway. She didn't care if the Argo II wasn't ready in time; she would walk if she had to and they could pick her up on the way. Percy was alive. Percy was coming home, albeit eventually.

Sally smiled. "You send him to me when you're done, you hear?" she said. "He has missed a good dose of mothering since he's been gone. And he left without tidying his room." She paused, fastidiously folding her used Kleenex into a square.

Annabeth had been leaning forward in her seat, chewing on her thumbnail and staring at the phone. She looked up at Sally when Sally had paused and picked up on the hesitant hovering. "I will," she said, and shifted so that she could hug Sally.

Annabeth and Sally had spent a lot of time together, witnessed enough of each other's tears to sink a battleship, but physical contact between them had been almost nil. It had been limited to hand-holding, soothing pats on the arm, the brush of fingers when they both reached for a truffle or popcorn in the front of some asinine movie they were watching to try and take their minds off Percy. Sally had kissed Annabeth goodbye once or twice, a quick brush of cheeks, but for Annabeth anything more than that would have been too odd.

Athena hadn't exactly been around to be motherly and Annabeth had never really been close to her stepmom, so having a mother figure there as a source of comfort was something that was so alien she wouldn't have known what to do with herself if Sally had tried. She couldn't ever remember someone hugging her when she scraped a knee, assuring her it would all be better, and there had been no one to make her feel safe in the dark when she had nightmares, only her 'bad cop' stepmom. There had been no mom to take macaroni and glitter creations to, either, back in preschool.

Sally, on the other hand, was more tactile than Annabeth but until that moment, when relief had begun to permeate her brain and hope had rekindled in her chest, Annabeth had never felt it right to hug Sally. She hugged her friends, sometimes, and Percy, of course, but Sally was a weird mix of friend and mom. It made Annabeth so fearful that it would feel awkward or so completely foreign that she'd freak out halfway through and hurt Sally's feelings that she'd tried to put up barriers to it happening, little physical clues that she wasn't open to it. Perhaps that hurt Sally's feelings all by itself but Sally knew her history; Percy would have told his mom what had happened with Annabeth's childhood and Sally was not one to force anything on her.

Now, however, sitting on the couch in Sally's apartment, having just been told that Percy was coming home… It finally felt right. She clung to Sally and found herself crying again, tears of happiness and gratitude, as she wondered if the scent of vanilla and gardenias and furniture polish was what all moms smelled like. If that was what safety and comfort and home were meant to smell like.

"I'll make us some tea," Sally said, breaking the hug after a long while of the two of them gently rocking on the couch. She stood up and straightened her skirt. Her face was wet again, too. "He's coming home, Annabeth," she said giddily.

Sally's grin was so wide it became contagious. Annabeth felt muscles she hadn't used in the longest time groan and protest under the strain of actually getting to smile for once.

"He's coming home," Annabeth echoed, still struggling to make it sink in. "He's really coming home..."

Sally smiled, reaching down and taking Annabeth's hand and squeezing it tightly. "Someone's been listening to our prayers," she said. "Even if it wasn't Hera, it was someone. He'll be back before we know it."

Sally let go of Annabeth's hand and moved to the kitchen. Annabeth heard the chink of china as Sally got mugs from the cupboard and the gush of water as the kettle filled and felt herself sink back into the couch cushions and knew very little else until Sally pressed the hot mug of tea into her hands. Her brain was still struggling to comprehend that everything that she had been hoping for this whole time was going to come true.

And that, when it did, she was going to kick Percy's ass for leaving her in the first place.

Later, when the tea was drunk and the light outside turned into pre-dawn grey, Sally made up the spare bedroom and Annabeth slept like a coma patient until well past noon, the first time she'd done so in over six months.