Heroes of Olympus Series. Annabeth Chase X Male Reader Story

The Pros and Cons of a Stress Ball

(Y/N)'s POV

There were countless times in his life where (Y/N) had wished he was dreaming, in fact it was so common, it was almost a running joke. His life was still a mix of dream and reality most of the time, his vision was still cloudy, his memories were still an assortment that never fit together.

But every time he had been injured, and wished himself to be dreaming, and every time he was in so much pain he felt like it couldn't have been real. That he must have been dreaming, he would have happily have accepted them as reality if it meant he were dreaming right now.

As his chin hit the dirt, and he felt the smack of metal to the back of his head, making his thoughts all jolt, and his skull burst with heat like it was on fire, and as the voices around him became garbled, he just wished he were dreaming.

Because this was unfair. Cruelty for cruelties sake, not even hurting him, just making him suffer. As his breath shook out his body and his ribs hit the ground, his voice was lost to him, all he could see was the rubble.

As he felt Percy's hands wrap around him, and the momentary feeling of weightlessness as he was hefted onto his friends shoulders, he kept waiting, waiting for the message, or the warning, or the threat, that told him this was a dream.

That was undeniably the most painful part, as his eyelids fluttered, and the thumping in his head got duller and duller, with each wave of heat from his skull, he was still waiting. For a voice to ring in his ears, for an outside stimuli to wake him.

There was even a point, just for a second, where he would have welcomed a change in the landscape, he would have hoped for the rubble to become a taunting face of a sleeping goddess. But it just didn't.

The further (Y/N) got from that destroyed building, each footfall from Percy leading him away from it, just meant (Y/N) was closer and closer to realising this was a reality. Then he understood, as a dream finally did take him, that him realising that reality had caught up with him, was entirely the point

His dreams were just a darkness, that overtook his eyes when he had finally felt enough of the guilt, the anger, and the despair of his waking mind. As much as he wished to dream of a far away reality, where Fleecy and Iris were safe, where they had not just been attacked, his wish was not granted.

He woke up with a sharp breath, one that was immediately filled with a sort of saltiness in the air, that was another moment of heart wrenching pain, because for that half a second, where he was awake, but had not yet open his eyes, he imagined that it was a dream.

Before his eyes opened, it came over him, a sense of relief, he had imagined it of course. It was a warning, it was a dream. A warning that he could change, a dream that had no grip on reality. But when he opened his eyes, he knew immediately he was wrong.

A boat was rocking beneath him, his friends were all around him, he was covered in a collection of sleeping bags like a blanket, but as he sat up, the first thing that smacked him in the face with reality, were the fresh tears on their cheeks, and the grim silence in the air.

Percy's POV

Percy felt like a failure, like everything he had done on this quest was wrong, and after what happened to R.O.F.L. He felt even more awful for involving the rainbow goddess in his problems, no matter how big they felt to him at the time.

Walking away from the rubble was hard, there was always the voice in the back of his head telling him that he could help them, a horrible feeling that they were trapped under the rubble that he couldn't quite shake, if he didn't know he was dealing with Gaea, he might have listened to it.

Instead he found himself struggling forward. Moving on, the guilt weighing on him heavier than (Y/N) did. Percy already felt like the lamest demigod in the history of lame.