AN: I should probably be sleeping right now, but I just had to write this down. Fellow writers out there, you know what I'm talking about.

THIS IS RATED FOR MURDER. IF THAT TRIGGERS ANYTHING, THEN PLEASE. DO NOT READ THIS.

"Goodbye, Mother," Annabeth says, placing a quick kiss on her mother's cheek before rushing to the door.

"Bye, dear." Athena places a potato in the cast-iron pot that is set upon the stove. "Have fun with Thalia! Tell her I say, congratulations!"

"Yes, of course." With one last wave, Annabeth shuts the door behind her. She leans on the wood for a moment, closing her eyes and sighing in relief, before starting on her way to Thalia's house.

The skirt of her dress brushes against her legs. She should have moved up to hoopskirts a while ago, being sixteen and all, but Athena and Frederick had to put most of their money toward Malcolm's college fund, and they just don't have the extra dollars lying around to purchase a skirt for Annabeth. Her mother complains about how she's not "lady-like," and the whole hoopskirt situation is putting a damper on her growing up the "right way."

Annabeth doesn't care, really. She's seen Katie and Silena and Miranda waddle around in those things, and she'd rather not partake in the "fun."

As people pass by her, she waves, and they wave back. Lou Ellen tries to converse with her, but she quickly excuses herself, saying that she must hurry to Thalia's.

"Oh, right!" Lou Ellen exclaims, shifting the weight of her groceries to one hand. "You mustn't forget to congratulate her for me."

She gives Lou Ellen a smile. "Don't worry; I'll tell her." With a parting nod, Lou Ellen heads down the street to her own house.

Annabeth carries on, careful to avoid the saloon, which is on the way to Thalia's house.

Well, everything is on the way to Thalia's. The Grace house is beyond the edge of town. Mr. Grace owns a large farm that producers a lot for the community. Annabeth's brothers–Malcolm, Bobby, Matthew, and Luke, when he was younger–work as farmhands there.

When she steps off the road, she treads carefully, knowing that if she were to ruin her new shoes, her mother would kill her.

There's a gravel pathway, of course, but it rained last night, and there could be puddles. With this in mind, she decides to hold up her skirts, just to be safe.

She makes it to Thalia's, stain-free, and knocks on the door. Mr. Grace answers it.

"Oh, Annabet'," he greets. She opens her mouth to speak, but he beats her to it. "Thalia's over by tha wheat fields."

"Thank you, Mr. Grace." He nods before shutting the door in her face.

Shrugging her shoulders, she treks to the wheat fields. She knows exactly where Thalia (and probably Katie and Silena) is.

She heads up the hill to where Thalia's Pine Tree is located. Thalia's Pine is large, probably largest in the entire country, and was named after Annabeth's friend because Thalia was the first to ever climb to the top.

Her suspicions are confirmed when she makes it up the slightly steep hill. Thalia, Katie, and Silena sit on a blanket under the pine. Silena is fawning over something on Thalia's hand.

Katie is the first one to notice her. "Hello, Annie!" she greets, waving at her friend.

Annabeth smiles grudgingly at her. "Don't call me that," she advises when she sits down. "Oh, and hello to you, too."

Silena bounces where she's seated, obviously holding back a squeal. "Check out Thalia's ring!" she crows, grabbing onto and forcing Thalia's hand forward so that Annabeth can get a good look.

It's a golden band with three gems on top. One is a blue topaz, another a white, turned gold by the band, gem, and the one in the middle is red.

"You got to admit," Silena says, "even though Kronos is a blundering idiot, he's got positively exquisite taste."

"I'd hope your father didn't marry you off to him just for his taste," Annabeth comments.

Thalia laughs, then sobers, and begins twisting her ring in between her thumb and forefinger. She bites her lip. "How…How did Luke take the news?"

"When I went over to Brother's store to tell him," Annabeth starts, "he disappeared into the saloon, and I have not seen him since."

"Oh, no!" Thalia groans. She places her hands over her eyes.

"Poor Luke," Silena says.

"Drinking his heart away, probably," Katie agrees.

"I'll have to check in on him later," Annabeth says. "But, Thalia, Lou Ellen and my mother told me to tell you congratulations on your engagement."

They spend a while chatting after that. Katie gossips about how her sister Miranda has been sneaking around lately with Lee Fletcher. Silena gushes out all the ideas she has for the wedding, even after Thalia says that both she and Kronos, her fiancé, agreed that the marriage would not happen until at least a year from now. Then, she changes the subject to how she wants her wedding with Charles Beckendorf to go. Annabeth doesn't have the heart to remind her that she and Charles are still just courting.

The conversation carries on until the sun sets, turning the wheat field below them into an ocean of liquid gold.

Katie excuses herself, saying that she has to be back in time for dinner. Silena follows her. With a promise to get Luke out of the tavern to Thalia, Annabeth leaves for town.

Most girls would worry about entering a saloon all by herself.

But Annabeth knows there's nothing to worry about. Most of the men are working at this time, or eating dinner with their families, and Argus (the tavern owner and Thalia's older brother) would make sure that nothing happens to her.

Her chin high and her jaw set, Annabeth pushes open the doors to the saloon.

Inside is dark and dank. Wooden tables and chairs are dotted across the floor, and, in the back, the bar is set up. Argus cleans a shot glass from behind the counter, nodding at her.

Aside from Argus, there are two men in the tavern. The first one is Mr. Sherman, who was once Annabeth's schoolteacher, and he glances at her when she enters. He's not getting a drink, but grabbing the Sunday paper. (It is a school night, after all.)

The other man is the one she's looking for, but he doesn't look at her. Luke slouches on a chair, the poor lighting making his face look ghastly and turning his blond hair almost white. A bottle of bourbon is clutched loosely in his hand, and he brings it up to his lips in order to take a swig.

"Luke," Annabeth says when she approaches him. He doesn't seem to register her; just continues to stare at the bottle in his hand like it can fix all of his problems. She shakes his shoulder. "Brother, get up. It's time to go."

A sigh flows past her mouth when he doesn't react. "C'mon," she grunts as she places his arm around her shoulder, forcing him to stand. "Let's take you home, eh, Brother?"

Mr. Sherman approaches them. His newspaper is tucked under his arm, but Annabeth can still clearly read the year that's printed in bold, black letters: 1891.

"Do you need any help, Miss Chase?" he offers.

Annabeth shakes her head. "No thank you, Mister Sherman," she replies. "I've just got to get my brother back to his shop. Shouldn't be too hard." Luke slumps against her, taking another swig of his beer. He mumbles something incoherently.

"Okay." Mr. Sherman looks uneasy. "Just be careful. You can never trust a man who's had too much alcohol." With those words of wisdom, he leaves the tavern.

Annabeth gives Argus a thankful smile. "I'll be back tomorrow to pay for…whatever he drank," she promises.

Argus nods in response. Always a man of few words.

Practically dragging him, she leads Luke out of the saloon. She's glad no one is out and about as she helps him stumble down the street. The gossip would never end, and, after what he's been through as of late, she doesn't want him to have to deal with rumors.

She opens the door to his shop, closing it behind them, and, since she knows she isn't strong enough to carry him up the stairs to his living space, places him down on the chair he has behind the counter. She goes around the room, shutting the blinds on the windows, before going upstairs.

When she comes back downstairs, she hands Luke a wad of his clothes. "Here," she says. "Change."

He takes the pieces of cloth in clammy fingers before dropping them in the floor. "No," he pouts, whining like a toddler.

She sighs, digging her palm into her forehead. "Look, Luke," she starts, "I know you're hurting over Thalia getting engaged, but–"

"You don't know anything!"

Suddenly, Luke is on his feet, screaming at the top of his lungs. "You don't know what it's like to be alone! You have NO IDEA what it's like to be COMPLETELY alone!"

Annabeth jumps back, fear racing up her spine. The hairs on her neck and arms stand on edge. "Brother, please, calm down."

"Calm down?!" he demands. "CALM DOWN?! No! I won't calm down! Do you want to know why?! Because Thalia is marrying fucking Kronos, and not me!"

"Brother–"

"So I'm not going to calm down!" he yells. "You know what, Beth? You know what I'm going to do to that-that bastard?"

His hand fumbles around his counter drawer before he finally whips out his pistol. Annabeth holds her arms up in a defensive position, eyes fitting around the room for the closest escape, if she really needs one.

"I'm going to shoot him right in the face!" Luke swings his gun around, like he's mimicking aiming it at Kronos.

"Luke!" Annabeth shouts, and he freezes. She lowers her voice speaking slowly. "Put down the gun. This is just the alcohol speaking, alright? You–you're not going to actually put a bullet in Kronos, right?" She takes a deep breath. "Now…just…put the gun down."

His face twists in confusion.

Then in anger.

He points the gun right at her. "No," he growls, and then his finger is squeezing the trigger.

And then everything goes red.

;

When Annabeth regains sight again, she's not in Luke's store anymore.

It's someplace cold and damp, even though the sun is rising brightly, and it's somewhere out of town. Birds twitter, almost nervously, above.

She sits up, and there's this sharp pain on her collar bone that's gone as quick as it came. Her hand goes to cover it, though, and she realizes that the front of her dress is completely covered in blood. Not only that, but her skirt is ripped and dirty and her shoes are gone.

What the hell had happened to her?

She stands on shakily legs, practically crawling out of the ditch she had been placed in. The forest surrounds her on all sides, dense and thick and covering her from anyone who might be looking. She can barely see the roof of Argus's tavern over the tops of the trees.

Using the trees around her to help her stumble along, she moves towards the town at an agonizingly slow pace. She just wants to get to town as soon as possible to figure out what happened to her, but her legs feel like led.

When she breaks through the tree line, the sun is up, and the orange hue to the sky is gone, replaced by endless blue.

The towns' people bustle about, but none pay any attention to her, which she finds extremely odd. If she ever saw a girl stumble around the street caked in blood, she'd probably react in some way, or at least notice.

"Lou! Hey, Lou Ellen!" Annabeth shouts when she spots the girl in question, but Lou Ellen gives no indication that she heard her.

This is probably another one of Lou Ellen's tricks, Annabeth realizes, grumbling under her breath.

Even though someone roping an entire town into giving a person the silent treatment seems a little far-fetched, Annabeth knows not to underestimate Lou Ellen. Once, she had convinced the entire school into speaking really quietly whenever Silena was around–even Mr. Sherman–to trick her into thinking she was going deaf.

Though the blood? And the waking-up-in-a-ditch thing? That isn't something Lou Ellen would do. Maybe the Stoll brothers had decided to put their own twisted spin on the prank.

Even though neither of these guesses seem plausible, they're the best Annabeth can come up with, and she decides to go with it.

She reaches her house and places a hand on the doorknob, ready to open the door, but instead she…falls through the wood. That's the best way she can explain it. One moment she's outside, the next moment she's passing through the door.

She falls toward the ground, but she flips over last-minute and lands on her back and her braced hands with a shriek. She scrambles backwards, her chest heaving with panic, her heart…

Her heart doing nothing.

When she reaches up to press two fingers to the side of her neck, there's nothing. No erratic thumping of her heart. No movement from her artery.

No pulse.

She doesn't have a pulse.

Why doesn't she have a pulse?

Before she can scream again, she hears her mother say, "I'm starting to worry about Annabeth."

Athena stands at the window, looking out wistfully.

"Why, dear?" Frederick sits at the head of the table with his Sunday paper. Malcolm, Matthew, and Bobby eat breakfast on either side of him, shoving at each other and bickering quietly.

"She left for Thalia's late last afternoon and she's…" Athena pauses, taking a deep, calming breath. "…she's still gone."

"What are you talking about, Mother?" Annabeth, knees feeling like jelly, pushes herself up. She moves towards her mother. "Ma, I'm right…" She tries to grab Athena's shoulders, but, just like the door, she passes right through. "…here." She stares at her shaking forearms. "I'm…right here."

"You remember what I told you," Frederick says, monotone, flipping the page. "Argus said she went to make sure Luke was okay."

"I know, but still…" She wrings her wrinkled hands in the cloth she's holding. "I'm just worried, what with that gunshot I heard last night…"

Gunshot.

It all comes flooding back to Annabeth so quickly she stumbles backwards, feeling like she just got punched between the eyes.

Thalia's engagement, the saloon, Luke…

Oh god, Luke, she thinks.

What did you do to me?

"But what if something happened to her last night?" Athena frets.

"I'm right here!" she screams, loud enough that she's sure she was heard in the next town over.

"They can't here you," says a new voice. A voice she's never heard before.

She whips around. A man in a crisp, white tailored suit stands behind her. He has long, silky black hair that spills over his shoulders, and there's a quiver of deadly-looking arrows resting on his back. The strangest part about him is his glowing red eyes, like she's looking straight into the eyes of the devil.

"Who are you?" she demands, clenching her fists. She hasn't fought in a long time, but, when she was smaller and allowed to do such things, she could dominate all the boys at school.

The man doesn't answer her question, but instead carries on with his lecture. "They will never be able to–"

"I asked you a question!" Annabeth shouts, stomping her foot.

"Right," the man says. "I am known by many names, but you may call me Cupid."

"Cupid," she repeats. The name sounds evil on her tongue, especially when she associates it with the man in front of her.

"You will have to get used to it in time," Cupid tells her, like he just read her mind.

"How did you–"

"Before I get to the main point," Cupid says, his voice cold and commanding, "you must understand a few things first.

"No one will ever be able to hear you again, Annabeth Chase, nor will they be able to touch you or see you. You shall never be able to feel the relief of cold water going down your dry throat or shall you taste food ever again. You will never know the troubles of aging or fatigued, but you will be plagued with many nights alone."

For a moment she stares at him.

Then she says one word. "Why?"

"Because," he says simply, "you're dead."

AN: This is a new story (obviously), as you guys requested after the end of my other story. I have absolutely no idea how long this will be, so, we'll get to that point when we get there.

I'm sorry if Annabeth was OOC, but please keep in mind that this is a different time and place. If she were as sarcastic back in 1891 then she is in 2010, she'd probably be whipped or something.

I really do hope you enjoyed, and that everything was alright. If not, then please let me know, and let me know what exactly I did wrong instead of just a vague statement.

This was not beta'd, so all mistakes are mine.

Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson, and the title for this story was taken from Bastille's Laura Palmer.

Constructive criticism welcome, and reviews really do mean a lot to me!