Falling for You

Percy: XXXV

Percy: XXXV

When Percy woke, he woke quickly.

Muscles tensed. Breaths held. His eyes were roaming the room before he even knew what he was looking for. Titans, maybe, or Gods, or Giants.

Instead, they landed on the blonde hair of the girl lying in bed next to him. She had stolen the majority of the covers as they slept, bunched up around her chest as she lay on her side, facing him. It was still mostly dark outside, but there was a lightening at the edges, the clouds black against the cooling navy of the sky. He looked sadly at the hints of pink just peeking through in the East. When the sun finally rose, Gaia would launch her assault, and they could all be dead before it was even at its highest point in the sky. Their sleep should have lasted forever. He wished he'd never woken up.

Annabeth snuffled in her sleep next to him, and Percy looked down, realising they were still holding hands from last night. Despite the hard-earned callouses and scars on her fingers, Annabeth's hand looked small and delicate in his. The skin on the back of her hand was soft.

He wondered when things would start to feel real again. When something could happen and he'd just think 'What do I do now', and not 'What the Hades am I doing here'. Maybe he had woken up in some kind of alternate universe.

Percy slid out of the warm bed regretfully; he knew he'd never be able to get back to sleep. Picking up his pyjama bottoms from where they had been thrown last night, he put them on, and went to stand at the window. The ship was still moving at an incredible speed. All he could hear from outside was the wind whistling. Having nothing around them but sea and sky, it was easy to imagine that they were all that existed in the world. He glanced back at Annabeth. Maybe he would be okay with that.

And then he thought about all he had done to get to this point.

His cracked nails dug into the wooden windowsill. No. Before he died, he still had one last mission to do. He felt it branded into his chest every time he took a breath. It was carved into the back of his eyelids. Gaia had to die. He stared through the window, and saw her die a thousand ways at his hands between each blink. His hand wandered to his back, and it was only the absence of his sword that dragged his eyes away from the window. His head listed from side to side, locating his sword lying partially under his pillow. When the warm metal slid into his hand, he felt something in him settle and sink. His hands stopped shaking. He sat on the edge of the bed and listened to Annabeth's soft breathing.

Was Gaia asleep now too? Conserving her energy for the big fight? He hoped she slept with her eyes open. She had to know he was coming for her. Everything that had happened to him… he could blame it on others, sure. He could blame himself. On some levels he did. But right at the root? Right at the sick and poisonous root that needed to be weeded out and burned was Gaia. She had orchestrated this from the beginning. Muttering in his head and dropping him in muskegs. An image crossed his mind: Gaia, embedded in the shadows of the floor in Rome, shifting the earth beneath their feet, dragging Annabeth into the pit. And she had got him instead. He didn't blink as he stared at the floor. A wave slammed into the window opposite him, a crack splitting it in half. What had she said to him as he had fallen? All good things must come to an end?

He was at the end. He would drag her down with him.

The boat shook and juddered. From his place on the edge of the bed, he could see the sea writhing and churning alongside the boat. Several other ships were close in the air by them, but it was too dark to see any faces in their windows. He held his sword tightly in both hands and began to jog his leg up and down. The cabin felt a lot smaller than it did last night.