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.
Showing someone your soulmark was a sign of intimacy, something you only did if your soulmark was in a particularly obvious place (Annabeth had once met a boy with it emblazoned on his forehead, poor guy), or if you believed you'd found your soulmate.
As it was, the marks were usually pretty obvious. Once, Annabeth had heard of a couple whose marks were each other's names.
However, when Thalia's arms settled at the girl's waist in an attempt to keep her from knocking the both of them over her sleeve had ridden up her arm exposing the spear shaft that drove it's way up her arm.
The other girl's eyes lit onto it, just the tip of the spear concealed beneath Thalia's jacket. Thalia blushed and tried to pull the sleeve down to cover the mark, but the other girl simply caught her wrist and, without a word, yanked the sleeve all the way up, exposing the tip of the spear where a crown sat on the spearhead in triumph.
Those dark eyes dragged back up to meet Thalia's.
"Lightning..?" was all she murmured and Thalia's face bloomed a terrific red color.
By the end of the day, they'd already exchanged numbers and made plans to meet a second time.
Seeing someone meet their soulmate was surreal because in an instant everything had seemed to click for Thalia. She'd gone from her normal, stubborn self, to running around like a child and smiling more than Annabeth had seen her do in years.
Reyna, as it turned out her name was, had shown her mark almost as soon as they'd started talking, showing off a jet black bolt of lightning that sat along her collarbone. How she could tell that lightning meant Thalia, or that a spear meant herself, Annabeth would never know, but they'd hardly even spared the marks a glance since their eyes met.
It was weird and creepy and in all honesty, Annabeth had wished, for just a moment, that she wouldn't ever meet her soulmate.
Of course, a week later when she saw Thalia and Reyna talking like they'd known each other for years she'd found herself eating her words.
~~
She was fifteen when Percy met his soulmate. It was late December, Christmas just on the horizon, and he had somehow talked her and Thalia into going ice skating with him down at central park like normal teenagers did. As it was he had to drag her away from her textbooks as she attempted to learn the entire language of French within the two weeks of break. (damn new year's resolutions)
Thalia had, of course, brought Reyna along and, as soon as they reached the skating rink, shot off hand in hand with her soulmate, leaving her and Percy alone to attempt to figure out how the hell not to fall over on thin pieces of metal attached to their feet.
As it was, she was currently doing better than Percy.
Percy was floundering about like a fish out of water, sliding on his butt, ankles, and knees and just looking like a total idiot the whole time. Annabeth doubts she's ever laughed as hard as she did when Percy somehow managed to get his skate stuck in the wall he had crashed into and was left floundering about helplessly with his foot attached to the wall.
Annabeth had known Percy since she was nine, met him in her third-grade class and proceeded to dump a carton of apple juice over his head in retribution for him insulting the yellow power ranger.
They'd been friends ever since.
So when Percy slid on his butt for the hundredth time and crashed straight into the knees of a boy with wild red hair and scruffy facial hair, noticed the fish and dolphins that curled down the boy's arms, and proceeded to abandon her for the rest of the hour she was at the skatepark, she was less than enthused.
She should've taken it as an omen.
~~
When Annabeth turned sixteen she moved.
She said goodbye to all her family and friends in New York and got dragged all the way across the continent to the other ocean just for her dad's stupid job in California. They didn't even fly, and so she was forced to endure two weeks in the car crammed between her younger brothers and wishing with all her heart that she could just curl up into a ball and die.
Percy had called her every night, every day, for that entire ordeal, filling her in on little details and stupid ideas he'd come up with. Like how Thalia and Reyna had gotten detention after getting caught making out beneath the bleachers during an assembly. How Luke and Ethan had succeeded in TP-ing their school's sign in the dead of night without getting caught. How Grover had eaten thirteen enchiladas in ten minutes.
However, he forgot to call her that third week.
He didn't call the fourth.
Or the fifth.
He stopped texting after the sixth.
Annabeth was alone in a part of the country she'd only heard stories about, most of them being bad soulmate dramas and Hollywood fantasies.
She didn't know what to do.
She found out why people got so attached to their soulmarks after that sixth week. In a world where she knew no one, where no one even bothered to give her the time of day, she had her mark. Always there, like a promise.
A promise that it would be okay, that she'd find someone who would give her some semblance of attention, that there was still hope for the future.
Annabeth never considered herself a romantic, relying instead on friendships rather than some vague promise of a future lover, but when she spent so many nights in an empty room, watching as the shadows of unpacked boxes strewn themselves over her floor, she found that a vague promise was all she had left to cling to.
The promise of someone who liked skateboards.
Santa Monica was beautiful at night.
Bright lights in a hipster city and she was left with the wish that she could just be absorbed into the city life. She'd close her eyes and dream of being taken away by the night wind. School started up again next week and she found herself clinging to the last of summer, which was unlike her.
She'd never liked school, per say, but she'd always been good at it. She hadn't enjoyed hours of mindlessly doing the same boring thing over and over, but she had been good at getting through them. She made okay grades without much effort and simply coasted through drama on account of being considered too scary to bother with.
But this year she didn't have anyone waiting for her to come back.
This year all she had was the vague promise of a skateboard on her skin. Over the four years since she'd gotten the mark it had changed. It had gone from its previous shiny glory to a scratched and beat up old skateboard, gouged and torn to shreds. Entire pieces of wood were gone leaving bare skin in its wake and an old and faded teal design where the deck used to be. Chips of wood and half a truck had fallen from the board and were now dotted down the skin of her arm, curving it's way down towards her elbow like shards of glass that had been strewn about.
For some reason, the sorry state of the skateboard comforted Annabeth and she never really had a reason why. It just seemed right. The squeaky-clean unused board that had adorned her flesh back in seventh grade had felt suffocating and wrong, but now that the board looked as if it had endured much more than its fair share of abuse, she felt as if it were another kind of reminder.
A different promise than one of a future.
A promise that the past did not stop her. A promise that it did not define her.
New York was only a month or two ago, but it might as well have been years.
Percy had stopped texting her three weeks ago and Thalia only sent the occasional snap. She'd get updates from Luke via Instagram once a month, but in all honesty, it felt like she was looking at the people she'd known her entire life through a telescope a million miles away.
When Luke had posted about his engagement she felt like she was observing the stars. Watching something she'd never actually get to interact with, and that it didn't matter if she was watching or not. It would happen with or without her.
New York was an old, broken promise, and she had to leave it behind her, like so many other things.
But her mark, her skateboard was a whole promise. A promise that her past did not define her, a promise that there was still a future. Still a chance.
She clung to it with a desperate hand.
~~
Halfway through her senior year of highschool Annabeth had to leave in the middle of a math test because a horrible burning sensation had started crawling its way down her arm.
She'd only heard of the kind of pain she felt in horror stories. The tales of nightmares. They said the burning happened when your soulmate was dying.
It had burned the entire way to the nurse's office and had only gotten worse when they'd exposed the mark to light. She'd sat in the office and, for the first time since she moved from New York, cried.
She'd openly wept in the office not just because of the pain, but also because this was it. This was the end of her promise.
When your soulmate died the mark left too. It tore itself from your skin with the worst burning sensation in the world and left only a scar in its wake. It would tear her skateboard from her arm and rip away all the promises she'd been clinging to for more than a year now.
The promise of a past.
The promise of a future.
Gone in a horrible burning sensation and an even more horrible scar left in its wake.
Annabeth didn't sleep that night or the day after. She didn't sleep, didn't eat, didn't move. All she did was sit and watch as her mark continued to fester on her arm like an infected wound.
She sat and watched as her promises burned.
On the third night, around three in the morning, the burning stopped.
Annabeth was almost asleep by that point, but the sudden shock of relief had sent her shooting up from the bed and running to the bathroom. She'd stood in that mirror for an hour trying to convince herself to just go ahead and pull up the sleeve to see the scar left behind, to see whatever promise her late soulmate had left for her.
When she finally did she cried again.
The skateboard was still there, but now something green and dark coiled around the board, staring out from the mark at Annabeth as if it could sense her looking at it. A snake, a cobra watched her from her arm, glistening along the mark like it'd always been there and Annabeth simply sank to the floor in relief.
Her soulmate wasn't dead.
The mark remained, but now it was a promise of so many things.
A promise for a future and a promise of a past, but a promise for endurance. A promise that this was not the end, that it would not end.
~~
"Piper." The voice is warm and melodic and just the slightest bit raspy from early morning rust and it sends goosebumps cascading down Annabeth's spine.
She looks up only to meet glistening eyes she can't even begin to try and name the color of and finds herself rooted to the spot. A long, white scar makes its way down the girl's temple, connecting with her eyebrow and then the corner of her eye before disappearing behind her ear. She offers Annabeth the brightest smile she's seen to date.
Annabeth struggles to remember how to speak English.
"Uh- guh- Piper?" she questions, unable to come up with a better response. The girl laughs and it's the sweetest noise Annabeth's ever heard, her smile could power a small country.
"No, I'm Piper," she corrects and Annabeth feels heat rushing to her face, begging to be released somehow. She chews her bottom lip.
"Right, no sorry," she runs a hand back through her hair to try and collect herself. "Annabeth, I'll be your roommate."
When Annabeth had been accepted into Harvard she hadn't been expecting to find herself sharing her room with a literal goddess.
Piper, it seemed, was the human embodiment of sunshine. After gracing Annabeth with her bright smile and musical laugh she'd set about setting up her half of the room whilst juggling not only polite conversation but also managing to color code and alphabetize her books. In the span of twenty minutes, Annabeth had identified three clear things about Piper.
She was attending the college as a compromise with her father so that she would get a good law degree before pursuing her interest in the arts.She absolutely loved anything pastel, blue, green, yellow, pink, you name it. If it was pastel, she owned it.Piper skateboarded.
It was that last one that really set Annabeth off though.
It wasn't necessarily surprising, she'd met plenty of people in her life that skateboarded. Heck, Percy had when they were both in middle school and trying to figure out the line between friend and dating which had ended with Percy's finding of his soulmate (a lovely young man named Grover who had the biggest heart Annabeth had ever seen, as well as the biggest appetite.).
However, Piper didn't just mention skateboarding, she showed Annabeth her skateboard.
It was old and beat up with a familiar-looking cobra coiling it's way up the underside of the deck and twisting around the trucks.
For some reason, Annabeth gets this weird funny feeling in her gut and an even weirder feeling when she looks too long at Piper's left arm which is covered with the long sleeves of her blue ski jacket.
She doesn't ask about the board design.
~
A month and too many all-nighters later Annabeth finds herself laying on top of Piper, desperately trying to keep her eyes open to read just one more chapter of her textbook. Just one more. She promises.
Piper is having none of it though.
"Annabeth for crying out loud!" she yells, "You haven't slept in a week!"
"Nine days," Annabeth corrects and flips the page of her textbook.
"That's worse!" Piper whines and Annabeth just rolls her eyes, chuckling ruefully.
"Piper, look, I'm fine," she looks up at her roommate, currently sprawled beneath her and watching Netflix on her phone. It was supposed to be just another one of their movie nights, but Annabeth has to finish her paper before tomorrow or she's not going to get it in before term. She's almost done, she just has to get the conclusion.
However, it seems Piper isn't about to let it go when she meets her eyes Piper screws her face up into a scowl, something demanding in her gaze that Annabeth hasn't seen before.
"If you don't get some sleep now you're going to collapse before lunch," she reminds Annabeth, but Annabeth simply rolls her eyes, finding that the effort of dealing with this is beyond her mental capabilities at this point. Right now all that matters is her, the textbook, and polyatomic ions.
She squints at the textbook, willing the squiggles of black ink to make sense.
"Annabeeeeeeeeth," Piper whines, shaking her shoulders in an attempt to try and get her attention. Annabeth responds in kind by pegging Piper in the nose with her eraser. "Hey!" she complains and Annabeth simply laughs in response.
Piper really is the roommate that Annabeth could never even begin to hope for. She's considerate, neat, respectful of Annabeth's personal space, and even attempts to keep her from killing herself by forgetting to eat and sleep. It's more than anyone's done for her since she moved to California in sophomore year of high school.
However, that's not very helpful when she has to write this paper, now, and Piper is distracting her with her perfect multicolor eyes and warm breath on her cheek. Annabeth grips her computer tighter in her hands, watching the tips of her fingers turn white.
"Annabeth," Piper calls again and, partially in resignation that she can't write a paper when she can't see past her own fluttering eyelids, Annabeth finally relinquishes her death grip on the computer. Piper immediately scoops it up and pulls it away from her arms as if she'd just been waiting for the defeat to sag her shoulders.
"You're evil," Annabeth murmurs and Piper chuckles, wriggling her way out from beneath Annabeth and placing the computer down.
"That's why you love me," she responds in kind and Annabeth manages a vague hand gesture she's pretty sure was supposed to be the finger but didn't quite make it. Piper simply rolls her eyes and grabs a blanket, dumping it over Annabeth haphazardly and then crashing back down on the bed, knocking the wind straight out of her.
"Pipeeeeerrr," she groans in protest, but Piper just laughs, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling the blanket down just ever so slightly to expose her face.
"You are too much sometimes, y'know?" she offers and, feeling too tired to try and wrangle her wrists from the covers, Annabeth knocks her forehead into Piper's in retaliation. Piper just laughs again, throwing her head back with the motion.
"How are you not this tired..." Annabeth groans softly into Piper's blanket. Piper hums offhandedly.
"I'm not going for an architectural degree in two years," she murmurs simply and Annabeth just groans again in reminder of her past self's ambitions. If she met her past self she'd gladly kick her into the sky. "I take it that means, 'let me sleep'?"
"It means I'm trying, but someone is still wearing her damn ski jacket which is not nearly as comfy on this side as it is inside," she grumbles around a mouthful of Piper's hair and all she gets is shaking shoulders in response, the quiet sound of Piper trying to restrain a cackle. She grumbles again in protest.
"You're so bossy 'Beth," Piper teases, sitting up again on Annabeth's bed and Annabeth just grumbles at the loss of warmth. With long fingers that Annabeth has spent far too long admiring, she yanks off the jacket and Annabeth is treated to a long winding mark glistening up Piper's arm.
It's colorful, and constant, and moving . That's what catches Annabeth's attention the most.
"Annabeth?" Piper questions, noticing that Annabeth's suddenly stopped breathing, but Annabeth doesn't bother with that, simply sitting up and resting her fingertips against the skin on Piper's arm as if she's studying a blueprint for the first time.
The words "I PROMISE" are large and carved in inky black letters like someone took a sharpie to Piper's arm, but all the around the letters are a sleeve of doodled scenes. There's a cup of coffee being poured over and over again, a book with its pages flipping endlessly across Piper's skin like it's caught in the wind. Buildings rise along the bottom of the words in spires, lights glittering in tiny little windows and flashing through miniscule highways. All Annabeth can do is stare because what do you say, what do you do when you can see yourself on someone else's skin.
"Annabeth?" Piper is giving Annabeth something between a questioning and a slightly embarrassed look. It's at this point that Annabeth realizes she's practically clutching Piper's arm. She gulps and releases her, scrambling back slightly.
"S-Sorry, just... never seen one that moved before," she mutters, unable to come up with some other sort of excuse. Somewhere, deep in her brain, something is screaming at her to pull up her sleeves dammit!
Piper laughs. It's a slightly strained sound like she's done it all far too often and the joke is old now. She awkwardly runs a hand back through her hair.
"Yeah, my dad always said that had to mean my soulmate was a constant thinker," she mutters. Again, she can tell the joke is old in Piper's mind, but the smile is real, genuine. Mostly on autopilot, Annabeth reaches to pull down her collar and expose her shoulder.
"Since you showed me yours, I guess it's only fair," she offers a smile and Piper grins too, but when Piper's eyes fix on the old worn down board the smile freezes on her face. Her eyes are the most focused Annabeth's ever seen them, almost settling on a grey color, reflecting Annabeth's own gaze back at her.
"That was my first skateboard..." Piper's voice is hoarse and choked and she reaches up with a trembling hand to touch the scar at her temple. Annabeth bites her lip, hard.
"I've always wanted to build a city," she murmurs back weakly, and the smile that comes back to Piper's face is nearly pitiful, but then shifts to something bright. She laughs, and it's that bright, rambunctious laugh that Annabeth has gotten used to over the last couple weeks. The one she doubts she'll ever be able to live without.