Colours || A Mortal Percabeth Soulmate AU

Chapter One || Let's Set The Scene

Colours. Something we take for granted. But imagine living in a world without colours, just everything in black and white. Greyscale.

Then, one day you meet a wonderful person. You get to talking, and become quite close. One day you see them and realise you're in love. Then your entire world bursts into colour. It's more beautiful and wonderful than you could ever dream of. Because of this you know that you fell in love with your soulmate.

Annabeth Chase doesn't have to imagine. This is the world she grew up in and the world she has learnt to live with. Everything she sees is in monotone shades of black, white and grey. Lots of grey.

She's followed every bit of advice. Talk to everyone you meet, make lots of friends, join lots of clubs, just nothing is working. So she's succumbed to following the last piece of advice: wait. People find their soulmates young, especially if they have enthusiastic parents who throw them into lots of clubs and activities to meet lots of new people. This made it off that Annabeth was in her senior year of Highschool and hadn't had a glimpse of hope yet.

Her friends have spoken of how their world exploded into bright vibrant colours. Colours everywhere. A beautiful display that Annabeth could never imagine. It happened to Piper when she became friends with Jason, Hazel with Frank, Leo with Calypso. She was the odd one out.

Annabeth was getting ready to go out, it was freezing outside in the chill of mid-January so she slipped on her coat, hat and gloves. As she stepped outside the cold of the air hit her quickly, the slight breeze hit her face and made her whole body shiver. But she has to get to school on time, she must press on. She had her earphones in and began to get lost in her thoughts, it was so easy on a day like this, with the quiet atmosphere and the empty landscape. Her brain was on autopilot, she had walked this route countless times, it would be inefficient to think about it.

She became so unfocused that she didn't notice when a boy skidded right in front of her. As his skateboard rolled to the side and he toppled forwards, she barely had time to react. She just jumped back as he barely missed her, crumpling onto the floor.

"Oh my gods, I am so sorry." He said it quickly while holding his hands in front of him.

They made eye contact. A strange glimmer of light appeared, like nothing she'd ever seen before. It seemed almost like... no. It couldn't be. Wouldn't be. It's not. Her mind must be playing tricks on her. It must just be the lighting. Oh crap he's looking at her weirdly. She quickly thinks up a response.

"It's fine-" She stuttered, trying to play it cool.

"No, I am so sorry. Uh..." He stuttered as he hastily snatched up his skateboard. "I'll just go. So sorry, again."

He hopped onto his board and quickly skated off. Annabeth tried not to think much of it, it was probably nothing, she just shook it off and continued walking. She kept going until she saw the familiar gates of Goode Highschool. It was a massive school, catering for all the nearby towns, and because of this Annabeth had been attending it for three and a half years now. It was the biggest school she'd ever seen, it's corridors could seem to go on forever and there were so many students in her year alone, she would never even be able to keep track of half of them.

She entered through the open gates and made her way through the large doors at the front of the school into the bustling hallway. The place was dingy and dusty, paint peeling off walls and lockers bent and misshapen. For such a large school it was not taken care of at all.

She shuffled through the crowds of people, finding her way to her locker then eventually her first class of the day, science. She would usually be excited as she sits next to a good friend of hers, Silena but instead it put a complete downer on her mood. She found out last night that Silena can see colour. She had fallen in love with her soulmate. Annabeth had been feeding this lesson, having to sit next to her and hear all about it.

As she sat on her stool, writing notes, there was a constant noise in her right ear. Silena was chatting about colour, what it's like and trying to describe it to her. It pained her to hear about it. All the wonder, all the joy, the feeling of being truly in love. Her pain turned to jealousy then to anger.

"Enough already! I don't want to hear about it." Annabeth herself was surprised at her sudden, loud outburst. She expected Silena to yell back but instead she shot her a sad, yet sympathetic look.

"Sorry Beth, that was too much. I'll shut up now."

"I'm happy for you but I just, I don't know."

"It's okay I get it. I get what it's like to feel left out with these things, it's awful. I wasn't thinking, we can talk about something else."

The morning passed smoothly and she found herself sitting outside at a bench, talking and laughing with Piper, Thalia and Silena. The day was normal, just a normal day in her life. Well except for one thing. That boy with the skateboard... she just couldn't get him off her mind. She didn't know why, after all he had fallen, almost tripping her up and inconvenienced her by holding up her walk.There was nothing notable about him. Just a stupid boy, with really nice hair. Wait what?

She drifted back into reality during her last lesson but he kept slipping into her mind. That moment. When they made eye contact she swore she felt something, something different. Something... new?

That night she tried sleeping it off, anything to get the stupid thoughts out of her mind. It's nothing, nothing happened, he probably doesn't even remember you. Just a stupid boy. Just a stupid boy who fell over like an idiot.