Promises Skin Deep (Pipabeth)

I

It starts when Annabeth turns twelve.

That in itself is not surprising, it's supposed to start when she turns twelve, it always does. Every book she's read, every movie she's seen, it always starts when the main character turns twelve.

Because twelve marks the beginning of realizing it.

The beginning of looking for it.

Twelve is when she gets her soul mark.

And twelve is when she finds herself staring at what appears to be a skateboard on her shoulder.

To be perfectly honest she doesn't really know what to make of it. She's heard it's supposed to be something special, some sort of symbol that summarizes your soulmate's entire being into a single image on your skin. Something that will make it impossible not to identify them by when she finally meets them. So a skateboard, something so ordinary that she sees daily, seems underwhelming somehow.

It's not like it's not a pretty skateboard. It's gorgeous, teal with black details that swirl across the deck and twist around each other like some sort of dance that's been performed, and it's shiny and new and perfect. There's not a single scratch, not a single dent, nothing that even begins to mar the surface. She's seen the marks on people who've had them for far longer than she has. She's seen her dad walk around, brushing his fingertips over an old, worn out looking owl in his wrist, trying desperately to cover it up. She's seen Luke, who has only had his for five years, brush the eyepatch just under his ear, worn leather and cracked against his skin like a badly done tattoo.

She's never seen a mark like hers, shiny and perfect and polished.

It doesn't stay that way for long.

~~

Three months from the day she turned twelve a long scratch has formed its way down the deck, Annabeth doesn't know where it came from or how it appeared, but it cuts the shimmering blue form in half and mars each perfect black line into a cracked pattern that no longer flows together like it used to.

Percy's mark was so much simpler than hers. A bright green leaf with the words "stay green" written beneath in flowing green script. Even with his dyslexia, he could read it perfectly and she'd simply congratulated him on the mark, one that for sure would be so much easier to identify than a broken skateboard deck.

Sometimes she catches herself sitting up at night, tracing her fingers over the crack on the board and wondering if perhaps it's some sort of sign that something's gone wrong. Maybe it's supposed to be a warning that her soulmate is in danger, or worse, is hurt.

But she can't find anything no matter where she looks. For once research doesn't seem to be the answer and she's pouring over every book in existence trying to find reference for what a cracked soulmark means.

And she finds nothing.

She's left with a cracked skateboard and too many sleepless nights.

~~

She's thirteen when she actually sees it happen.

Almost fourteen to be more technical.

It was nearing the end of summer and she'd just been going to the park to hang out with Thalia when they bumped into a girl with the darkest eyes Annabeth has ever seen.

The girl had been yelling, at who Annabeth assumes is her sister, in Spanish when she'd nearly decked Thalia as the older girl barrelled after her younger brother.

Thalia had managed to catch the girl, but being nearly the same height, succeeded in headbutting her as well. This, of course, resulted in both a cackling Jason, blushing Thalia, and amused looking older sister while the girl scrambled to apologize.