A Tale of Gods and Magic

Annabeth: A Tall Midget Must Be Awakened

A/N Some of you may be upset at the lack of Percabeth (or any other ships for that matter) fluff (cough, cough TimeyWimeyNarwhal cough, cough). The beforesaid @TimeyWimeyNarwhal convinced me to add a little fluff after much cajoling and counseling on synonyms for "said." I personally do not like writing romance, but for all the sons and daughters of Aphrodite out there, get ready for a cheesy Percabeth scene at the end.

Good luck.

 PS Only a few more chapters until Hogwarts!!! Sorry for all the waiting.

Arnold clasped his hands behind his back.

“Start now, wise one. Try to wake up the midget. You know this’ll be fun, don’t you?” questioned Arnold. His unrelenting question-asking was starting to get quite tedious. Weren’t villains supposed to try to show off their powers? Annabeth had easily exploited so many overconfident monsters, but Arnold… and yet, she was still sitting here, tied up.

“Actually, he’s quite tall-”

“No. You’re just quite short. You think shortness is quite an asset, don’t you?” Arnold cut her off.

“Well-”

“STOP STALLING!” Arnold’s face turned stormy, but was immediately replaced with a fake smile. “unless you want me to kill the midget right now?” Annabeth realized that this was the first time since they’d came here that he hadn’t ended his sentence with that strange question.

“No, no,” said Annabeth hastily. She tried to think. Mom, right now would be the perfect time for a little genius burst maybe? You know, to save your, um, nephew?

Annabeth waited. She scrunched up her eyebrows. She held her breath. She repeated her request.

But there were no genius bursts.

She could hear Arnold humming under his breath. Maybe Frank would come-

The door slammed open. Well, actually, it broke. And an extremely large dog bounded into the room.

“Frank!” but Frank didn’t even bother to look at her. He pounced on Arnold, who went down with a look of shock on his face. Frank, obviously not sure what to do, licked Arnold’s pinched face with an enormous, wet tongue. Annabeth watched as Arnold’s face went slack. Annabeth was pretty sure it wasn’t from Frank’s magical tongue. Well, you never knew what a demigod’s powers could be.

“Where… where am I?” asked Arnold. Annabeth and the large dog shared a look.

“Arnold?” asked Annabeth.

“Arnold? What… what do you mean?” This seemed suspiciously alike to the little amnesia trick Hera had played on Percy and Jason. But Hera would never do something this, well, callous.

Suddenly, Arnold’s eyes turned green and his pupils disappeared.

“You may have ruined this servant of mine, but that does not mean that I am defeated.” The green light left Arnold’s eyes. His body went limp.

“What the Hades was that? Oh, and Frank, can you maybe untie me?” Annabeth swore the dog sighed. “what you don’t want-”

Frank turned back into human form.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine. But what… what was that? Is Arnold dead?”

“I’m sorry.” Frank lowered his head. “his, um, heart, it… “

“Frank,” Annabeth shook her head. “you don’t need to shelter me. I went through Tartarus and survived. He’s dead. It’s fine. I didn’t like him anyway.” Frank blushed and grabbed a knife from a sheath at his waist. He started sawing away ropes from the chair. After a few minutes of awkward silence, Annabeth stood up.

“Thanks, Frank. We should get out of here. Let’s just hope the others aren’t still in-”

“Nap-time mode. Yeah.” Annabeth rubbed circulation back into her wrists as they made their way to the scale-filled room. She mulled over the strange green light in Arnold’s eyes, the voice that had definitely not been Arnold’s.

The obvious answer was possession. She knew that sometimes, in the process, there could be little ticks, or flaws in their speech. The “don’t you” Arnold had dropped at the end of every sentence perfectly filled that example. But there hadn’t been any monsters strong enough to do anything of that sort after Gaea. It was a puzzle. All Annabeth wanted to do was discuss all the options with Percy in the privacy of her room on the train. Better, the Athena cabin, or the edge of the lake, or the furthest outskirts of the strawberry fields… Annabeth’s heart felt a sudden pang. She wished she was back at Camp Half-Blood, watching the leaves turn the rich colors of fall and finally crinkle to the ground. She was snapped out of her fantasy by Frank creaking open the door at the end of the ugly, concrete hallway.

Inside, everyone was arguing. She could hear Will loudly listing the reasons why it would be fatally dangerous for Nico to shadow-travel. Surprisingly, Nico had a slight smile on his face. It disappeared in an instant as he saw Annabeth.

“Annabeth!” Percy ran over to Annabeth. He wrapped his arms around her, tight, and she pulled him closer. In the background, she could hear Connor venting about something and Frank awkwardly cracking his knuckles. But it didn’t matter because she was with Percy.. His sparkling eyes, his happy smile, they were all hers. She didn’t care that everyone was watching, that they were in a room filled with scales, for Zeus’s sake. He was hers and she was his and they were together. He let go of her reluctantly and she grinned, filled with dizziness from him and from the hug. He leaned forward to kiss her, but she turned her head to the side so his lips hit her cheek. Her mind buzzed with happiness. She wrapped her hands around his waist.

“Everyone’s watching,” she whispered.

“I honestly don’t care,” replied Percy. She didn’t need to respond. He wound his hands through her hair and pulled her closer. Everything was silent.

“Seaweed Brain-”

“Wise Girl-” their words overlapped, a melody to Annabeth’s ears.

Then they kissed and the world stopped spinning for just a moment. The birds stopped singing and the waves stopped lapping against the beach and Will stopped lecturing Nico, which was a pretty big achievement.

“I love you,” said Percy.

“I love you, too,” said Annabeth.

A/N

AAAAH! Dying from the cheesiness! How was I convinced to post this? I think I'm melting in fluff that I didn't want to write. This will probably not happen again... well, until a few chapters ahead. (PS I revised the fluff scene a little...okay, a lot)

Death by Fluff. Someone write that story. :)