that summer |percabeth au| ✔︎

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chapter | 00
❝ Taking a shot 'cause I can't take it, but I don't think they make anything that strong. ❞

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THIS IS THE PART WHERE I DIE.

Don't panic; it isn't unexpected. The sea is prideful, after all, and Death never goes back on a deal.

Grams always believed that the Chase sisters were immortal, even after her daughter-in-law died delivering the last of us (me). But among our six bodies, she said, there were only five souls. Twins were special. A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

So Rachel and I—the twins, the babies—were blessed. Blessed by all who loved us. Blessed by the gods and goddesses, by the lore and legends. Our connection was unbreakable, and from the first time we sang together in the bathtub, instinctively harmonizing at age three? 

Well.

We were bright stars, Grams promised, put on this earth to make music, to share it with the world. No matter that Rachel grew into a soft-spoken beauty with a voice as comforting as a warm breeze, and I became the raging storm, fearsome and intimidating. Our destiny tangled like our limbs in our mother's womb. We were the first to know each other, the first to feel our matching heartbeats. 

Together, we made magic. Two bodies, four lungs, one soul.

The beginning and the end. Completion.

Rachel and I sang from Grams and our father. We sang for our older sisters. We sang for fundraisers and festivals. We sang in Greece, our mother's homeland. We sang for the guests—always, rich, often famous—at Chase Estates. Grams' farm and eco-resort, the place we'd called home after our mother's death. We sang for the men and women who harvested the crops, who came in for dinner covered in dirt, laughing and eager to listen. During the Halloween fairs, we sang on top of the big music trucks that traveled through the streets in the city as costume-clad people jumped around us, dressed like angels and princesses and mermaids. We sang for home—Greece and New York City. We sang for our mother's memory—even though for Rachel and I, she never existed.

We sang for fun. For our lives.

That's what the music felt like. Like being alive.

So maybe I was a liar, and maybe I should've told her years ago, but I didn't. Grams, I mean. It's just that she was wrong about completion, so wrong about the connection and the stars.

The thing about our souls was that Rachel really did  have her own, like each of our four older sisters. 

And mine belonged to the sea. Always.

I was born into the sea, born knowing this. Rachel had been born on the boat, but by the time my turn came, we'd been tipped. My first breath outside my mother's body was salt water; the Caribbean Sea lay claim to my soul the moment it took hers.

I've never considered this soul more than a loaner, a broken-winged bird I've only nursed and borrowed. Grans might not believe it, but eventually, I knew I'd be called upon to return it.

One night last spring, just after the spring festival, the moonlight sparkled on the waves not far from where our mother had delivered me, her last, and I came so, so, so close.

Then I escaped. For a time.

Even a fool knows that you can't cheat Death more than once. And technically, after my watery birth, that night last spring already made it twice.

There's peace in acceptance. Death in it, always. Inevitable. With the acceptance of one thing comes the dying of another: a new belief, a relationship. An ideal, a plan, a what-if. Assumptions. A path. A song.

Consider: Pregnancy dies upon birth. Plans die upon action. Dreams die upon waking.

Not to ruin the story, but if you've come this far, you should know how it happens.

The end begins, as all things must, in the water. Now. Ropes of blonde hair twist before my eyes, swaying like reeds. One by one, red clips loosen from the braids, tiny jeweled starfish that 

drip-drip-drop

into the deep.

My body is sinking, sinking, sinking. Cold...and a memory stirs. The warm sea pressing against me, leaking into my lungs. Stealing my voice.

No, wait....That was then. The spring. That last time, when I came so, so, so close. Then was the Caribbean, my Caribbean. Now is the Pacific, and though it's late summer here, the Pacific isn't as patient, isn't as warm. My limbs will soon turn as blue as my silk dress.

It's midnight now, the in-between, and the only person who knows where I am is asleep above, in the berth of our boat. He was dreaming when I left; I knew from his sleep sounds. Beautiful, he was, stretched out alone where moments earlier we'd been entwined.

When he realizes I'm gone, he'll search the water, dive beneath the boat. Frantic. Desperate. But he won't reach me.

There's blood in my mouth now, blood in the water, black-not-red at these dark depths. My lungs burn.

I'm ready.

But as my heartbeat stalls, as my limbs give their final tremble, as all around me turns to darkness, I can't help but wonder...

If the sea had offered me one last chance—if I could've bargained with Death to make this broken wing mine, a soul with all its beautiful mistakes and imperfections—would I have taken it?

Even after everything I'd lost?

~

Hey guys~

Enjoying it so far?

I just want to give you a heads-up that I have changed some characters' names, and sometimes when I'm editing I miss them:

Artemis: Kinzie
Christian : Percy
Elyse : Annabeth
Sebastian/James : Tyson
Drew : Silena
Lemon : Candy
Noah : Travis

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@colaccinos ❤︎