Brave

She is fitful in her sleep.  She tosses and turns beside him, under his scarred hand on her torn shoulder, and whimpers pitifully.  Now that he thinks about it, this is the only time she has ever made any noise that can be considered pitiful.

     It kills him, completely and utterly.

     He wants to cry, and to keep himself from giving in, he blinks furiously and counts to one-hundred in Ancient Greek.  It takes all of his concentration and by the time he accomplishes his goal, he is no longer fighting the tears.  Briefly, he thinks of waking her, of bringing her out of the nightmare that causes her whole body to shake, but he can’t.  They have been in Tartarus for only the gods know how long and she has barely slept except for a few minutes here and there.  She needs this rest more than anything, even if it is punctuated by nightmares.  This is the longest they have been left in peace.  No unearthly monsters to fight off, no burning rivers to cross, no falling stalactites of black glass to dodge, no roasting geysers of steam hotter than the fires of Hades to avoid.  Of course, it is not peace.  Not by a long shot.  But for this moment, it will have to do.

     Annabeth continues to wrestle with her nightmare and he has to look away.  He never could stand to see her in pain and did everything he could to banish it from her presence.  But now, he can do nothing.  There is a constant pain in both of them that nothing can heal.  Tartarus is a nasty place to monsters, but to demigods, it is downright hostile.  Even the air burns down their throats, inside their lungs, as they breathe, sucking in the poison and forcing it back out again.  Their bodies are weak and sluggish, their defensive movements becoming clumsy, and it has to be some outside force keeping them alive now.  Because they certainly aren’t doing it themselves.

     His gaze sweeps over their surroundings, trying to ignore the reds that are dark and bright at the same time, the oranges that flicker like flames, the browns that are somehow not earthen but unearthen, the blacks that make him wonder if he is looking at Tartarus or the inside of his eyelids.  The colors assault his eyes, burning his retinas, but he has had plenty of time to adjust to the visually murdering hues of this place.  He listens as hard as he can, attempting to hear past the hissing, bubbling, boiling, crashing, and echoing of Tartarus’ vast expanse.

     Seeing and hearing no immediate danger, he allows himself to look down at Annabeth.
She lies curled on her side, her face in his hip and her feet woven between his as he sits with his back against a warm rock face.  The ankle she broke before they fell is swollen and discolored with ugly shades of purple and black.  The cast is long gone; the bubble wrap melted off when they reached the first boiling river and there is nothing they can use to make a new one.  She had once been wearing jeans, but they had been burned and sliced so many times that she cut them off into shorts.  The black letters have completely disappeared from her orange shirt, taking with them into oblivion any thought of home, and there is a gaping tear in the side, exposing a length of burnt skin and the color of a bra.

     There is not enough left inside for him to feel any kind of arousal by her lack of proper clothing.  All he sees is a tired girl who can’t decide whether she blames herself or her selfish mother for their predicament.  He sees the girl he fell in love with when he was only twelve-years-old.  He sees the girl he was separated from for seven months.  He sees the girl who kissed him and snuggled with him in a horse barn aboard a flying ship because it reminded her of their first conversation together.  He sees Annabeth.  Exhausted, skinny, wounded Annabeth.  And yet, he sees beauty too.  He cannot say that she has never been more beautiful because Tartarus dulls and deafens everything, but she is still his Annabeth.  And Annabeth was, is, and will be beautiful, so this girl is beautiful too.

     In her sleep, Annabeth gasps.  Her hand flies out and grips his leg tightly; her head twitches and his name pushes past her lips.

     He wants to take her away from this, but for the first time in his life, he cannot save her.  It tears him apart more than any claw or tooth ever could.  It burns his soul more than any river of fire.  It tortures him more than any earthly torment.  Compared to this, bamboo shoots beneath his fingernails sounds almost enjoyable.  This is the one time in his life that he can do nothing for Annabeth.  He can only be here with her.

     After examining his surroundings again with a fine-toothed comb, he does something he knows he shouldn’t:

     He lies down beside her, pushes her feet out with his own, and pulls her whole body to him.

     Any monster could come upon them now and he would not see it until too late, but he needs this just as much as she does.  Annabeth flinches when he takes her into his arms and holds her tightly, feeling every inch of her body pressed firmly and assuredly to his.  Their scars, scabs, bruises, and still bleeding cuts touch, but so do their tiny stretches of unharmed skin.  That is what makes it worth it.  He can feel a spot on her shin that is still skin.  A bit here on her elbow.  A place there on her stomach.  A little space right here on her forehead.  The tip of her nose.

     Miraculously, she doesn’t wake up.  Good, he thinks.  She needs to sleep.  He does too, but that is beside the point.  She needs to regain some of her strength, even if it is only the tiniest bit.  If only one of them is to survive this, then it is going to be her.  He will do everything and anything to make sure that happens.

     Why?

     Because a world in which she no longer exists is a world he wants no part of.

     A world in which there is only him is the most disgusting thought he can conjure.

     Somewhere along the line – somewhere between twelve-years-old and seventeen, between loathing and love, between gentle youth and harsh adulthood – they became a hybrid.  Percy-and-Annabeth.  Always together, sometimes in body, or mind, or heart, but always in soul.  A universe in which he must return to being Just-Percy is unthinkable.

     He stares into Annabeth’s beautiful face.  Something huge and warm, wonderful and terrifying swells in his chest, threatening to capsize the heart that floats within.  He tries to find words to describe it, words to tell Annabeth when she wakes.  But the words fail him.  None of them seem quite right.  There are three of them that he’s sure will work just fine, but even they fall short.  For a second, he thinks maybe he’s not brave enough to say them.

     Shaking his head, he allows himself a small smile.  He doesn’t know if it is a sad one, a happy one, or simply a generic smile.  He realizes that he does not need any words, no words at all, to describe how he feels.  He doesn’t need to tell Annabeth anything.  He doesn’t need to tell her how much she means to him.  He doesn’t need to say the three words that any other person on the planet would have already said a million times if they were in his situation.  After everything he and Annabeth have been through, after all the terrible things that have happened to them, after all the times gods and mortals have tried to keep them apart, after all the times he thought they wouldn’t make it out, they have stayed together.  That is them in one word, in three syllables: together.  Such a simple word.  Yet somehow, not simple in the least.

     It’s not that he’s not brave enough to say the words he is thinking, tossing around in his mind until nothing but them exists inside him.  That is not it.  He certainly is brave enough.  But his bravery doesn’t matter.

     It is simply that he does not need to say them.

     She already knows.

     She has known all along.