As soon as the iris message ended, Luke let the tears spill over. He had been thinking of Thalia for so long and it felt good to finally see her face. Even if she was glaring at him for the entirety of the call. But maybe, just maybe, there was a hint of grudging respect in her eyes? Luke was sure of it. Anyways, when -if- the plan was pulled off, then there'd be more than just mere respect in her eyes- there'd be love. As the tears slid down Luke's cheeks, glimmering like diamonds, he sighed heavily, thinking of the way that Thalia used to look at him. She was electric, and not just because she was the daughter of Zeus. She was magnetic, practically -and sometimes literally- crackling with energy. And when she had looked at him, all those years ago, it was like lightning striking the Earth. A beautiful bolt of it zipping between them, encasing the two of them in a magnetic field against the world.

There was none of that spark anymore. Nowadays, Thalia looked at him like she would kill him all over again, if that were possible. Luke let the sobs burst out of him, great wracking heaves, that made him feel like he might throw up. Why did everything hurt so much? Paradise, life, death. He couldn't help the shudder that ran through his body when he thought of death- Thanatos. The cold, empty eyes that pierced his skin to peer into his soul; shining a terrible beacon upon everything that Luke loved, and feared, entwining the two together until the god had finally seen how best to punish Luke for the boy's refusal to conform to the rules of Elysium.

Thalia was still alive, and the land of the living was not Thanatos' terrain, so that could not be helped. How could Percy Jackson possibly suffer any more than he already was? And so the only option left was Annabeth Chase. Thanatos couldn't actually hurt her, of course, but he could hurt Luke. And so, after a few swipes across his iPad screen, Thanatos had smirked down at the boy. A wicked thing that cut his face like a violent bolt of lightning across a midnight sky. And then he vanished. Luke had stood there, in the study, trembling for what felt like an hour. He had expected the ground to open up, swallow him whole. Or for the furies to appear before him, ready to cart him off to Tartarus. But none of that had come, and so Luke had, with wobbling steps, traipsed up to his bedroom. With each step, the trepidation increased, and it was only when he finally reached the bed that he shared with Annabeth. He hadn't expected the girl to be there, presuming that she would stay at a friend's house, or perhaps her own. But there she was. Luke had breathed a sigh of relief; he was glad to see her.

He had crept beneath the covers, grateful for the warmth of her body and she shifted before turning to face him. Her eyes fluttered and then she stared at him.

"Hey," said Luke gently, tucking a stray curl behind her ears.

The girl stared at him wordlessly for what felt like an eternity. Her blinks were long and heavy, and Luke felt a terrible sinking feeling settle deep within his belly. Finally, Annabeth spoke. But Luke knew what was up before she said a single word. That horrible cloudiness in her eyes, the vacant expression, and the fact that he didn't seem to register to her.

"Who...?" The word seemed to bubble off Annabeth's lips like a poison. She didn't recognise him. And she didn't know herself, either. For hours, he talked to her, trying to cajole some memory out of the girl. But she looked at him blankly. Not remembering. Luke had cried unashamedly. He was scared, so scared. And Annabeth, not even knowing who he was, had tried to console him. Eventually, Luke fell asleep, lying in a puddle of tears, his heart feeling more hollow than ever. And when he awoke, everything was back to normal. Annabeth beamed at him, remembering. All was well. Supposedly. But for the next few days, there were those glitches in Annabeth. A subtle flickering when she no longer knew who Luke was, when she was unable to finish a sentence for she had lost the words to do so. And for those few hours, nothing Luke said or did could bring Annabeth back. It was as pointless as trying to compel Annabeth to recognise Percy. After a few days, those short bursts of amnesia started to dissipate- they became shorter, only a few minutes, then mere seconds, and eventually, they ceased all together. But Luke knew that if he did step out of line again, he would be in a world of heartache, again. Those episodes were warnings from Thanatos. And Luke knew that if he continued to defy the rules of Paradise, he -and Annabeth- would pay for it.

*

Annabeth saw the world differently to most people. It wasn't just the dyslexia and ADHD. It was the way her eyes found the details in a portrait, how she would immediately see the Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite Column Orders; the colonnades and entablures; all those unique architectural features that others either didn't notice or glossed over. But lately, the world wasn't coming into focus. As if somebody had turned down the resolution or something. Life felt sepia-tinted and listless. Like a rainy childhood Sunday in the midst of a long winter; stuck indoors, with nothing to do and nothing to look forward to. But she was in Paradise! Surely, she should be happy. And Annabeth knew that there were things to look forward to, things she loved. She adored architecture, for example, but occasionally, the word for 'spandrel' slid off her tongue into oblivion and she found herself wrapped around a sentence she could not finish. Others looked at her strangely and she always felt a sudden burst of anger. She was Annabeth Chase, a daughter of wisdom! She wasn't stupid. But her heroes, namely Zaha Hadid, looked at her pityingly, and that humiliation was awful. But what was worse was losing her passion and joy. Those moments when she wasn't even sure if she liked architecture had her questioning her whole reality. Everything always felt so uncertain and unsteady nowadays. And Annabeth lived in perpetual fear that every step she took would be the last that she would take as herself. She could feel her mind slipping away from her. Sometimes, she'd reach out into the air trying to grasp at something intangible and unseen- her mind. But it was no use. Not anymore. And yet, some rational part of her mind still argued that she shouldn't be feeling such ennui in Elysium. And the cogs in her brain turned constantly, trying to decipher some unimpeachable code: what was wrong with her?

Sometimes she'd wake in the middle of the night. Luke was always right beside her, so close that she could feel his breath against her skin. And he almost always had an arm slung over her, protecting her. Like he did all those years ago. Like he would continue to do so forever. And she loved him, she loved him, she loved him. She knew that with all of her heart. But sometimes she wondered if it was the wrong sort of love. Sure, she had had a crush on him but that had faded when... when what? She didn't have an answer. Anyways, it didn't matter. She had died. And Luke was there for her. He had waited for her for an eternity, upholding his promise. Her words still echoed in her ears sometimes. "Family, Luke, remember?" And he had remembered. She had asked him once, and he had replied that he had never forgotten. That it was the one thought that anchored him to Elysium, that dissuaded him trying for rebirth and the Isles of the Blest. All they needed now was Thalia. And then, their family would be complete. Wouldn't it?

The days seemed to blur together nowadays. The only disturbance is a single panicked thought that worms her way into her brain and takes residence there. She doesn't know what it is; every time she goes to say it, the phrase lingers on the tip of her tongue, before dissolving, as if soaked through by a summer rain. And then it is gone. Annabeth had taken to carrying around a little Moleskin notebook with her, and a pen. The book is sea green and crinkles beneath her fingers. Its pages as fragile as the thoughts she tries to capture with it. So far she has nothing to work with. Just a vague scribble she scrawled one night, in that delirious state between sleep and consciousness. The girl spent hours trying to decipher that stain of ink. What was it? She spent days poring over cryptography books, trying to match the shape to a cipher, but so far, she had found nothing. The best that she could say was that the thing was vaguely reminiscent of the sea. Like the crest of tumultuous wave as it rises up from the water before crashing down upon the shore. But even that was pretty sketchy. And anyways, why would she be thinking about waves? She couldn't even remember the last time she'd been by the water. Not the pools nor fountains that she spent seemingly endless hours with Luke, but the sea. She suddenly felt a deep longing for the sea. She yearned for the smell of salt, the sharpness of the scent, so gritty it felt like an almost tangible thing in the atmosphere. And the feel of the water around her ankles; the rush of sea foam and the way that the body of water felt like exactly that: a body. A living and breathing being that enveloped her with a brilliant cold embrace. Somehow she knew that the water made her feel safe. That it was as familiar as architectural vernacular. Which didn't make sense because she was a daughter of Athena and not Poseidon. There were no demigod children of Poseidon that she knew of...

Nevertheless, she wanted to be close to the ocean. She rose early one morning. Luke was already gone. He was always so busy nowadays. Probably planning some elaborate heist. Annabeth pursed her lips, frowning. She'd promised to help him; they had plans to steal the Diamond Trellis Faberge egg, and its surprise, an elaborate elephant automaton. But she couldn't remember the last time they had even run over their blueprints. She was getting so forgetful. And it was starting to irritate her immensely - what is a daughter of wisdom without her memory? Annabeth clenched her teeth together as she made her way down the stairs, before squeezing her eyes shut when she suddenly remembered that phrase again. She was close, so close. It hovered right there in the deepest recess of her mind and then... it was gone. She was close to tears. She had it for a fraction of a second. And now it had vanished. Annabeth stamped her bare foot against the wood of the staircase. What did it matter anyway, she growled, she had forgotten her notebook - even if she had managed to voice the name, it would be lost to the air straight away. Forgotten instantly. She let out a scream of frustration. And then she stopped.

Name. Annabeth darted upstairs, grabbed her book and flipped it open haphazardly. She gripped the pen tightly in her hand, disregarding the messiness of her scrawl. At least the word was discernible. There. Name. Although the word had drifted away, beyond the edge of her mind, she had one minuscule clue. It was a name, not an object... but someone; a person. That much she knew for certain now. She glowed, happiness flooding through her. And then she stood up, tucking the little notebook and pen in her pocket before pulling on her cap.

The walk to the sea was arduous but worth it. It wasn't even a real sea, Annabeth thought. Just something engineered by the architects of Elysium. And yet it comforted her. She stepped into the water and felt calm. Calmer than she had in a long time. It was odd, but as soon as the water washed over her, she felt a tension ease from her shoulders, a weight that she hadn't even known was there until it was gone. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back. Breathing in the salt of the air. The waves swirled around her but the sand beneath her feet was steady, and she knew that nothing and would ever happen to her when she was near the water. Normally, she'd be irritated with the thought- there was no evidence or anything whatsoever to back up that outlandish assertion, and yet she felt, with all the clarity of her mind (which truly wasn't very much these days) that it was a certifiable truth.

Annabeth spent hours studying the ripples and eddies of water that swirled about. They reminded her of something... something she couldn't reach. And so she let it stay out of sight. Accepted it. Surely, it'd present itself in due course. The name passed through her mind again, as it always did, every once in a million seconds on a broken clock. But she didn't growl or scream at the air. She simply let it be. And although her mind struggled against that, her body kept her calm, focused her thoughts on the far away horizon. And Annabeth let her thoughts float in her mind, not judging or critiquing them, simply observing each and every one of them. They fluttered, like butterflies, stopping for brief snatches of time before flitting away again. The girl forced herself to breathe, opened her lungs to the salty air and simply observed the thoughts. And after several hours, she got up wordlessly, holding her shoes in her hands, with her notebook and pen tucked away safely in a pocket. She gave the sea one last glance before she bid it farewell. Maybe she imagined it, but the water seemed to sigh at the sight of her turning away. And she promised to visit it again. She swore it would. She swore it on the River Styx, and so she knew she would visit it again. Because she knew how dangerous those oaths were, didn't she.

Didn't she? Did she? How did she know that? What actually happened when you broke an oath on the River Styx? Annabeth wasn't ready to risk that. She would most definitely return back to the sea in the next few days. And not just because of her promise. It seemed that the salty air and heady atmosphere cleared her mind. Comforted her. Eased her thoughts and stole away her worries. It washed away the endless fuzz of white noise that she had never even noticed was there, and replaced it with only the brilliant crashing of the waves, like a powerful stallion of sea foam galloping across the sand, before disappearing into the water. Annabeth slumped down into the sand again, not caring that the sand once again powdered the limbs she had just brushed clean. She dug the pen out of her pocket and opened up her notebook, writing out three words.

The River Styx.

It was connected to the invisible trail of thought that kept caressing her mind before retreating, she was sure of it. And although she was not yet confident enough to swear it, she was pretty damn certain that she'd get to the end of this mystery.

And this time, when she wrote, she did not scrawl the words across the page in an untidy near indecipherable mess as she did in the half consciousness of sleep and wakefulness nor in that rush that came after a sudden epiphany. No, this time, she made sure that her thoughts were as calm and collected as the water before her had suddenly become. And so this time, she wrote like she had all the time in the world.

Because she did.

~~~

Ohmygosh, I am so sorry for how long it's been !!!

Thank you so much to @Baturalpkkaya3583 for being an utter darling and so patient and polite and reminding me that this story exists!!

So busy AND I launched a YouTube channel hahah

Also to my readers - if I have any left... it's been so so long, I'm sorry guys- how do you feel about the Disney Percy Jackson series?! I can't wait !! But if Rick's gonna be the like executive producer or something, then probably the actors will be 12 years old and I want to fall in love w Percy and Luke but uh, I'm 18, soooo... Let me know your thoughts!!!