A/N: Hello all!

Hope u are all faring well during this weird old time. Speaking of weird things: this! This is a lot more experimental than i usually write and also i feel like everyone is incredibly ooc so sorry about that? (also this is pretty much the slowest of slow-burns so soz) This is yet also yet another famous!au which im pretty sure makes it my forth (i feel like i have graduated from "i have a niche" to "i have a problem") but what can i say. If u see herecomesthepun u r probably going to get a very weirdly specific famous au.

also u may have noticed that this is not marked as complete, which is bc this is actually a two-shot bc this just grew legs and kept getting longer. and then it hit 50k and even i thought that was excessive for all in one go, so the next part will be up hopefully next saturday :-D

(also entirely unrelated but still equally as important: folklore by taylor swift. That's all i have to say. Literally no other words. lover who?)

Title from holocene by bon iver and i hope u enjoy!

Piper's text comes in just after midnight.

Annabeth is awake to see it flick onto her lock screen: waits, watches as the time changes from 00:03 to 00:04, and then her screen goes black. She doesn't touch it, just leans her head against her window and looks down at her book.

The words are getting harder and harder to read, recently.

"Predictions," Thalia demands in lieu of a greeting, the next morning.

Annabeth squints at her. Thalia has a strange habit of opening conversations with non-sequiturs like this: at this point, she should be used to it by now, and she is, but it's still not something she can handle this early when she hasn't finished her coffee yet. "Hello to you, too," she says. "Yes, this is a new jacket, glad you noticed."

"It's an ugly jacket," Thalia pronounces. Annabeth is only mildly hurt. "I need your thoughts."

"On what? The extinction of the red panda? Because I think it's inevitable."

"Your brain is so weird," Thalia says, which Annabeth finds incredibly rich coming from the girl currently wearing two different shoes. "Not about the red panda. The new season of Argo."

"Oh!" Annabeth's tired brain stutters over Piper's text from last night. She thinks she vaguely remembers it being something about that. "Right, yeah! Shoot, when does the first episode come out again?"

Thalia waves her off. "Not for a while. They're starting filming next week. That's also something we need to arrange, by the way, I spent all of the first season trying to catch Piper in her silly cheerleading costume but she Houdini'd her way out of it every time. We need to plan an ambush so we have photographic evidence."

Annabeth frowns. As a friend, she had tried to watch the first episode of Argo as soon as it aired, but seeing Piper not as Piper but someone else had been so uncomfortable she'd profusely apologised to her and not watched a single episode further. Thalia, meanwhile, approaches friendship with the same attitude Annabeth can only assume one would approach a street brawl, and insists on pushing through every last episode. Granted, Thalia approaches most things in this way – bullish, well-meaning, probably stoned out of her mind – but still, Annabeth would think that by watching the entirety of the first season she would already have enough fodder of Piper in a cheerleading costume without having to stage an ambush on her.

She says as much, and Thalia rolls her eyes. "That is not the same thing."

"It's not?"

"No, because that's not Piper, that's a character. I want to see Piper as Piper in a cheerleading costume. That's like seeing you go to sleep at a sensible time."

Annabeth rolls her eyes. "Funny."

"I see that you're not denying it," Thalia says primly. "However, I will let you have it because it's early and I know you are closest to homicide in the morning, and we have much more pressing matters at hand."

Annabeth is privately relieved for a change in topic. "It's telling that your 'pressing matters' involve Piper in a cheerleading costume," she says instead.

Thankfully, Thalia remains oblivious. "As opposed to what? What could possibly be more important than the humiliation of our dearest friend?"

"World hunger? The ACT? The fact we have an essay due first period?"

"We do?" Thalia says. Annabeth goggles at her. "Whatever, I'll sort something out, I've got several aunts I haven't killed off yet. Anyway, stop distracting me! We need to try and arrange something with Piper. Thank how funny it would be."

Annabeth has long since learnt that trying to pry Thalia away from something like this would take pliers the size of the Empire State. At this point it's just easier to indulge her. "We'll try something," she says. "Hopefully not get yelled at for trespassing on set."

"They're filming in our school. I think they can forgive us if we happen to get lost and happen to conveniently stumble into a classroom where they're filming Piper in cheer uniform."

Annabeth raises an eyebrow. "We, as seniors."

"Totally plausible!" Thalia defends, but she deflates. "I see how that can be a contingency. We might have to try and lure her out of set in the costume. We'll reconvene later. For now, I want to know your predictions for season 2."

"I didn't watch season 1," Annabeth says. "I don't know enough to start predicting. Why, did Piper let something slip?"

Mutinously, Thalia says, "No. She is like a vault."

Annabeth is reasonably impressed. Piper is the worst at keeping secrets, especially from them. And Thalia's persistence is akin to something of a battering ram. The producers must have threatened her life for her to be so uncharacteristically tight-lipped.

"Well, hopefully she's in it more," Annabeth says. "Might increase her paycheck and then she can stop being so stingey and buy us food whenever we go out."

"I have a feeling she will be," Thalia says. "I'm sensing a coming-out arc. Because her character's gay." As though Annabeth was unsure of what she was coming out of.

Annabeth rolls her eyes. "You think everyone's gay."

"Yeah, because gays make the world go around," Thalia says, and gestures towards herself like she isn't the physical embodiment of natural disaster. The other day she had proceeded in cutting a significant portion of her finger off during Home Ec and bled all over Annabeth's chicken pot pie. And it was a good chicken pot pie, as well. Annabeth definitely isn't still mad about that. "Besides, the sexual chemistry between her and that Reyna girl? I'm just saying."

"I think you're projecting," Annabeth says.

Thalia points a fork at her. "I am furthering a cause."

"To what, get in Reyna's pants by proxy of Piper?"

Annabeth has been Thalia's friend long enough to know that the only reason she doesn't blush all the way to her hairline is because she is wickedly good at maintaining a poker face. Still:

"Tell me I'm wrong," Annabeth says, and Thalia says darkly, "You'd like that, wouldn't you" but she stabs at her grapes with a remarkable vivacity that is only too telling.

At that moment, the woman of the hour herself slides into the seat across from them, her bag slipping off her shoulder. Annabeth has always admired Piper's ability to look drop dead gorgeous while wearing an outfit that wouldn't look out of place on a homeless man. It's really amped up these past few months, though. Annabeth thinks she's trying to take a stand against the producers telling her that she's not allowed to cut her own hair anymore.

"Hey, guys!" she says, dimpling at them.

Thalia whirls on her, not unlike a very passionate bat. "Tell me you and Reyna get together," she demands.

Piper frowns. "I thought I told you about Hot Bookstore Boy."

"Not in real life, dummy! On the show."

Piper's face eases in acknowledgment. "Oh! Well, you know I can't tell you that."

"Not even your best friends?"

Piper raises an eyebrow. "If any information got out they would absolutely blame me."

"Yes, because you're a notorious gossip," Annabeth says. "It really says more about you then it does anything else," and Piper gives her an evil look.

"Come on," Thalia wheedles. "Who are we going to tell? Annabeth has no friends."

Annabeth raises her eyebrows. "Neither do you."

"Yes, but it's voluntary. You're with us out of necessity."

"Speaks volumes," Annabeth mutters mutinously.

"No, Thalia," Piper says. "I've been sworn to secrecy."

Thalia sighs, but not disappointedly. For all Piper's affinity for gossip, she's been rather fantastically good at keeping hush-hush on the details of the show. Annabeth honestly can't say it's easy: Piper is hounded almost every day in school about it. They've taken to eating lunch in the science block just to avoid the constant harassment Piper walking into the canteen brings upon them. It's like being attacked by a pack of vultures. Annabeth's surprised Piper hasn't decided to screw it all and start being home-schooled.

Still, it's not for lack of trying. Thalia leans across the table, and takes Piper's hand. "Just think how much it would mean to me," she says, her voice saccharine and cloying, "a young gay, to see other young gays on television. You must know that we are starved for queer representation."

"Don't pretend like this is in the pursuit of equality," Annabeth says. "I can smell your ulterior motives from a mile off."

The act drops immediately, and Thalia sits up straight, her hand sliding out of Piper's. "So what if I think Reyna is fit? Seeing Piper make out with her in HD is the closest I'm ever going to get."

It's probably a testament of their friendship that Piper seems strangely touched by that. Annabeth would be the fattest form of hypocrite if she called it weird, though, only because she has definitely thought about what attractive celebrities she would quite like Piper to make out with onscreen, if not for her sake then just to get an unbiased kissing review. Piper takes Thalia's hand again. "That's so cute!" she says. "I should introduce you two."

Thalia looks like she's just short-circuited. "Uh."

"You've broken her," Annabeth says.

Piper looks confused. "What? It's not like she's unattainable. She's a friend. It would be so easy to introduce the two of you."

"You can't tempt me like this," Thalia says. She sounds a little like a dying hyena.

"It's not temptation when I plan to follow through with it," Piper says, which sounds strangely threatening. Annabeth apparently has a thing for people who approach friendship with a vigour that would not be out of place in a shoot-out. "I was talking to Chiron, he's the director, and he mentioned that he'd like to throw a wrap party when we finish filming season two. I can bring you guys along!"

"To clarify," Annabeth says, when Thalia does not, "Reyna will be there?"

"Reyna will be there," Piper promises.

"Huh," Thalia says, which seems to be the only thing she is capable of articulating.

Annabeth turns to Piper. "What about Hot Bookstore Boy? Wouldn't you want to invite him?"

Piper blushes. "He doesn't know about me, yet. I kind of want to keep the whole moderate-celebrity thing on the down-low."

That seems to be enough to bring Thalia out of her daze. "He doesn't know who you are?" she says in disbelief. "What? Does he not have an Internet connection? That sounds sort of suspicious."

"I mean, it's not that surprising, it's just a small web show."

"We watch it."

"Yeah, because it's filmed in our school, and you like to see if you made it into any of the establishing shots."

"I don't," Annabeth interjects.

Thalia ignores her and just scoffs. "He's probably a sociopath," she says. "I'd be careful, he probably wants your skin for curtains."

Piper frowns. "I think that's a compliment."

Thalia neither confirms nor denies, instead just takes a sip of Annabeth's coffee. Annabeth scowls at her half-heartedly.

Piper turns to her. "By the way, Beth, did you see my message last night?"

"You texted me?" Annabeth digs around in her back, produces it, shows Piper the text notification on the front screen. "Sorry, must have missed it. Was it important?" She reads it. "On my way home from season 2 table read. I think I accidentally kicked a raccoon. Wow, clearly this was top priority."

"You kicked a raccoon?" Thalia says to Piper. "Doesn't that go against your whole vegetarian animals-have-souls drivel?"

"I hope you are not suggesting that they don't," Piper says sternly, and Thalia wisely pretends to look shocked. This is a lecture they've both heard far too many times. "Besides, whatever it was, it went after my shoes. Vegetarian or not, I'm not letting some creature chew up my new sneakers."

Thalia considers this.

"Why do keep texting me so late, anyway?" Annabeth says. "You know I'm gonna be asleep."

"Yeah," Thalia adds, "where are my late-night texts?"

"Because at midnight your, like, psychic third eye opens," Piper says. "I am never emotionally prepared to deal with that."

Annabeth has to agree. They've had to install a rule that prohibits Thalia from consuming any jay or alcohol after one am, otherwise she gets strangely philosophical. The last time it happened she read Annabeth's palm in freaky accurate detail and then had rattled off at least twenty digits of pi. Annabeth hadn't even realised Thalia knew what pi was.

"That's fair," Thalia concedes. "I'll forgive you if you can tell me anything from the table read."

"Nice try," Piper says. She lets out a yawn, knuckles her eyes. Her nails are all painted different colours. "I feel like I need to sleep for three years."

"What time did you get back last night?"

"One. It was only meant to be a quick table read but then we all got chatting so we ended up running over. You'd think them casting actual teenagers would mean they'd be aware that school nights are a thing. Whatever." She lets out another yawn. "I just need to crash over the weekend so I'm ready for next week."

Annabeth sips her coffee. She can taste the bitter note of Thalia's vampy lipstick against the rim. "What's next week?"

"We're starting filming." Piper pulls a face. "Yay."

"Back in the cheerleader costume for you then," Thalia says, entirely conspicuously.

Piper sighs. "Joy." At that moment, the bell rings, signifying first period, and Piper groans, resting her forehead against the table. Annabeth sympathetically strokes her hair. "Bury me."

"Give it an hour," Annabeth says, and stands up, chucking her coffee into the trashcan. There was still a bit left but Thalia's backwash could probably evaporate oceans. "Good luck, Pipes." To Thalia: "You coming?"

"I'm coming," Thalia says, and hauls herself out of her chair, following her to the doors. "You need to help me construct an excuse for old Rodgers. I have six aunts left who I haven't killed off, which name do you think sounds like it has the highest possibility of a freak heart attack?"

Dinner tonight is beans on toast. It's the third time this week.

Annabeth doesn't mention it, just chokes it down, prays that Bobby and Matthew won't say anything either. Frederick at least looks a little apologetic as Athena pushes it around her plate distastefully, holding her fork like it's a live wire.

"Sorry," he says, a little awkwardly, as they all watch her take her first bite. By the face she pulls, also probably her last. "We weren't really expecting company."

"I can see that," she says coolly. She pushes her plate away, folds her hands in front of her.

The ensuing silence is very loud. Annabeth keeps her eyes on her own plate.

Athena is the first to break. "Annabeth," she says. Her nails are painted the same colour as her blazer. "How's school?"

"It's okay."

"Are you keeping up with your studies?"

"Yes."

"That's good," Athena says. "It'll reflect well on your college applications."

Annabeth wishes she could be literally anywhere else. "Yeah." She looks down at her plate, hopes this thread of conversation will be dropped. Her bread is becoming soggy.

Unfortunately, Athena doesn't seem to notice. "Have you started on them?"

"On my applications?" Athena nods. "Uh, not yet."

She raises an eyebrow, mild. "You need to stay on top of things if you want to get into a good school." Chiding. Like Annabeth doesn't know.

"It's only the beginning of the year."

She ignores this. "What schools are you thinking of?"

"Do we need to do this now, Athena?" Frederick says. "It's dinner time."

"This," Athena says, "is not dinner."

Annabeth has a hangnail on her left hand, her index finger. She presses the ridge of her thumbnail into it, hard, bites her tongue at the pain.

Athena turns to her. "Annabeth?"

"I don't know yet," Annabeth says. "Harvard. Cornell. UCLA, maybe."

"UCLA isn't Ivy League."

Harder. She feels something pool around her nail. "I know that," she says.

"I thought we talked about you attending an Ivy League school."

Like you. "It's still a good school."

Athena watches her for a long moment. Annabeth doesn't meet her eyes, stares at her plate: picks one of her hands out of her lap, curls into a fist around her fork. Her toast has gone cold. She also hates beans. She wants to leave.

Even Athena can't do much when she's up against a passive player, because finally she sighs, exasperated, and stands up.

"I'll order something in," she says. "Chinese?"

Bobby and Matthew perk right up. "Aw, yes!" Bobby cheers.

"I want dumplings!" Matthew says.

Frederick looks down at his plate, a little ashamed. He's the only one who's eaten everything.

Athena turns to Annabeth.

She's done here. "Not hungry," she says. "I'm going to my room."

Athena's eyes narrow. "Don't be immature."

"I've got homework," Annabeth says coldly. "Need to stay on top of my work, don't I?"

She doesn't ever let her voice get that acerbic around her mom, not anymore. Athena looks a little struck, though it's only betrayed by a brief flicker in her eyes.

"Fine," she says. "Go."

Annabeth doesn't need to be told twice. She picks up her plate in mechanical hands, empties it in the bin, loads it in the dishwasher, and is up the stairs before Athena can say anything more. She pauses on the landing, far enough down that she knows she's out of sight, and then finally lets out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding. It's shaky.

She looks down at her hands, still curled into fists. They unfurl. In the dim light from the bathroom, the door crooked open a little, she sees her fingers covered in blood.

The winter has darkened her room when she enters, even though it can't be later than six or seven. She has to flick on the light, watches as her room floods with colour. Her alarm clock by her bed reads 6:56; she stares at it, chewing her lip, considering. From downstairs she can hear the excited chatter of her brothers as they relay their takeout orders. The sky outside is beginning to bruise.

Mind made up, she grabs her sneakers, slides her arms into her sweater, and slips out of her window.

Piper is lying in on her bed scrolling through her laptop when Annabeth slides through her bedroom window. She doesn't even glance up when she comes in, just offers a "Hey," without looking away from her screen.

Annabeth toes off her shoes, leaves them up against the wall, and pads over to the bed. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to learn my lines," Piper says. She points at her screen. "What does that mean?"

Annabeth glances at it. "Ostensibly? Uh, like, apparently, or something."

Piper nods. "M'changing that," she mutters, half to herself, as she pulls out her phone and sends a text. "What teenager says ostensibly?"

Annabeth flops on the bed next to her. "I said it yesterday."

"Yeah, but you're not exactly the benchmark for normal teenager lingo, Bethie. You'd be more use in a survey in the vocabulary of forty-year-olds."

"I'm not the one who just said lingo," Annabeth says half-heartedly, but Piper ignores her. Annabeth just rolls on her back next to her and holds her phone above her face, flicking through her texts. There's not much, aside from Thalia's round of Battleships. She clicks it absently, watches as Thalia completely misses all her boats, then has her own go. She thinks, then aims for a square along the outside. Success. Thalia is so predictable.

For a few hours, she and Piper simply exist in silence, the only noise being the occasional tap of Piper's keyboard or a faint murmur as she reads one of her lines under her breath. This sort of quiet coexistence is what Annabeth cherishes most about their relationship, she thinks: both of them softening in the smudgy light of her room, surrounded by scented candles and open, leaking jars of nail polish. She's always sought comfort here, with Piper: it's a small area of her local universe where she feels safe enough to breathe.

She doesn't know long they're sat there for, watching as the shadows cast by the candles gradually dip lower and lower on her walls. All she does know is that when Piper closes her laptop the sky is pitch black outside, and two of the candles have completely burnt down.

Annabeth glances at her. "Is everything okay?"

"I can't look at that any longer," Piper says, "I'll go insane." She wriggles up next to her, presses her temple against Annabeth's shoulder, and watches her screen. Still Battleships, with Thalia: different round, though, Annabeth won the last one. They both watch as Thalia's next go loads in, drops a bomb in an empty square. Annabeth's turn. She hums a little, thinking where to land her bomb; Piper reaches up, points to the top corner. "There."

"Yeah?"

"She always puts a ship there."

Annabeth does. Predictably, a ship. Barely seconds later, Thalia texts her: HOW TF DO U KEEP DOING THAT! BITCH!

"Like clockwork," says Piper.

"Loser," Annabeth says. She sends back a simple heart, then switches off her phone, drops it against her chest. For a few moments, she and Piper lie in silence.

Then, Piper shifts. "Are you staying the night?" Her eyes are wide and amber in the candlelight.

"If it's okay."

Piper's face softens. "Of course. Anytime." A beat. "You know that, don't you?"

And Annabeth does. Piper's window has been unlocked for a very, very long time. "Yeah," she says. "I do."

Piper picks up her hand that's still laying on top of her phone on her chest, cradles it between both her own. Annabeth feels paper-thin. In the light from the candles, the blood crusted around her thumbnail looks black.

"I need to brush my teeth," Piper says. "I'll get plasters."

"Okay," Annabeth says, quietly.

Piper rolls off the bed, and patters towards the bathroom. Annabeth listens to her footsteps trail off, waits until she hears the tap switch on, before she lets a breath. She folds an arm over her eyes, presses them shut so hard she can see white static against the back of her eyelids, and thinks of infinity.

Monday dawns bright and early. Annabeth watches as dawn breaks, counts how long it takes for the sun to rise (thirteen minutes, two minutes slower than Sunday), ignores Piper's customary night text until she's on the train on the way into school. This time it's a selfie, captioned: we filmed ALL NIGHT i am EXHAUSTED i need a COFFEE.

She shows Thalia when she arrives, who is in the middle of rolling a blunt in plain sight of all the teachers. "She's wearing the cheer costume," Thalia says, who apparently has a radar for this sort of thing. "And so it begins."

"You're doing that now?" Annabeth says, of the blunt.

"They wouldn't dare narc on me," Thalia says. To emphasise, she narrows her eyes at one of the teachers carefully watching her, and he quickly turns away. "See?"

Annabeth is a little impressed. "Huh."

She can't stay and chat long, she has to find one of her science teachers to hand in a paper she'd written the night before, and by the time she's tracked him down, there are only a few minutes until the first bell goes. She checks her phone, sees a newer text from Piper, Thalia said you had to hand in a paper, see u at lunch?, so she sends her a thumbs-up in response, and then heads to her locker to get her books for first period.

But, to her surprise, when she opens her locker, she finds it completely empty.

For a moment, she can't process this.

What?

How can it be empty? She has an entire collection of textbooks that permanently live in her locker. She hasn't moved them since the beginning of the year, not unless she's taking them to class – but she puts them right back. She even alphabetised them the other day!

Where can they have possibly gone?

She leans in closer, as if they're hiding right at the back of it. She can't even think where her stuff would have disappeared to. She certainly didn't move them. And the only other people who would have the means to are Piper and Thalia, but she's sure that she's threatened them enough with bodily harm should any damage befall her fancy graphing calculator – which has also disappeared – that they keep a wide berth. She furrows her brow, completely dumbfounded.

At that moment, her eyes fall upon a slip of paper tucked at the very back of her locker, underneath the ugly magnet Piper had brought back for her from the Bahamas. She frowns, reaches in, and prises it free, unfolding it.

In blocky handwriting, it says: Hey! I'm part of the Argo cast and I'm borrowing your locker for this season, hope that's okay! You have a lot of textbooks, you're probably pretty smart. I think they were moved to the reception for the time being. What in God's name would make you want to take advanced Math?

That's how it starts.

"You," Annabeth greets venomously Piper at lunch.

"Me," Piper agrees. Then: "What about me?"

Annabeth points at her accusingly. "One of your castmates is a criminal."

Piper frowns. "What?"

"I have just come back from the main office," Annabeth explains, "to retrieve my belongings. Belongings that should currently be residing in my locker." To punctuate, she lifts her rescued pile of textbooks and slams them onto the table. Piper flinches, and sagely Annabeth thinks, good. She's conditioned them both well enough that even the sight of her books have them looking away in fear. "You want to know why they are not, though?"

"I have a feeling you're going to tell me," Piper says, meekly.

"Correct," Annabeth says. "They aren't, because someone broke into it over the weekend while you were filming and moved them. Look!" She waves the note in Piper's face. Piper blinks a little, and then plucks it out of her hand, peering at it. "My locker is mine alone! I'm pretty sure this constitutes as a form of breaking and entering."

Piper's mouth forms the words as she reads the note, and then she frowns. "We made sure to film away from the senior hallway."

Annabeth sighs. "My locker isn't in the senior hallway. It's in the science department."

Piper frowns. "What? Why?"

"No one has their locker there!" Annabeth defends. "I don't get trampled between periods."

Piper rolls her eyes with a huff of laughter. "Well, that explains that, then."

"Explains what?"

"We film all the locker shots in the science department. Chiron asked me if we had a place in school with a bunch of empty lockers to use, I didn't realise you were holed up in there."

Chastised, Annabeth says meekly, "It was a tactical move."

"I'm sure." Piper reads over the note again. "It's sort of cute that whoever it is left you a note, though."

"Do you know who it is?"

She shrugs. "I don't recognise the handwriting. Besides, I don't know what your locker looks like."

"Yeah, but—" Annabeth flounders. "There must be something you can do."

"Something I can do?"

"To get them to change lockers?"

"We've already started shooting, we can't."

Annabeth knows that she's massively overreacting and just needs to drop it, but still: "But that's not fair. They're putting my education in jeopardy for what, some establishing shots?"

Piper snorts. "Jeopardy?"

"Why are you laughing?"

Annabeth can't think of a single thing that's funny about this. Piper evidently doesn't share the same sentiment, because she's still snickering, until she catches sight of her face, and immediately sobers. "Sorry."

"It's not funny," Annabeth says. "This is serious."

"I know, sorry."

Just the sound of Piper's contrite voice is enough for Annabeth to suddenly realise what an asshole she's being. She feels all her anger expel from her in a rush, and she sighs, slumping forward on the table. "No, I'm sorry. I'm being overdramatic."

"Yeah, not gonna argue with that." Piper is aiming for levity, but her expression softens when Annabeth can only manage a smile back. "Is everything all right, Beth? You look tired."

"Yeah, yeah, it's fine. I just—" Annabeth knuckles one of her eyes, hard enough to see static like stars. "Didn't get heaps of sleep, last night. A little bit crabby."

It's the wrong thing to say. Somehow, Piper looks even more concerned. "Are you having trouble sleeping again?"

"What? No. Of course not."

"But you'd tell us, if you were, right?"

"Yeah, of course. You know I would. Just a one-off, today." Piper still looks bothered, so Annabeth rolls her eyes and takes her hand, giving it a squeeze. "I'd tell you if it was getting bad again, okay? I promise."

Finally, Piper settles, and squeezes her hand back. "Okay. Thanks."

"Worry-wart."

"Don't get on my case, you were the one getting all Hulk over a polite note." Piper flaps it at her. "Lord knows what would've happened if he was rude, you might have flipped a table."

Annabeth sneers at her, and she laughs. Privately, Annabeth's a little grateful the subject is dropped: she can already feel an impending headache press at the base of her skull, and the last thing she needs to be doing is fielding any intrusive questions.

It's probably nothing. She'll just stop for some Tylenol after school.

Piper seems to sense her sour mood, though, because she squeezes her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Beth, I know how you are about people touching your stuff."

Annabeth shrugs, and takes a sip of her water. "It's whatever."

"Can't you just swap it out?"

"Drew Tanaka rents out all the spare ones."

"If she weren't such a bitch I'd be impressed," Piper says. "Kind of Machiavellian. How much do you think she's making?"

"Lord knows. I know Travis Stoll is renting out two just so he can talk to her."

Piper whistles. "Jeez. Well, I guess you're kind of stuck, then." Annabeth groans a little and rests her head on her pile of books, and Piper rubs her shoulder. "Think on the bright side! Your locker is technically famous."

Annabeth glares at her half-heartedly. "Yes, that was a goal of mine, glad it's been achieved. Up there with winning a Nobel Peace Prize."

"Look at these theatrics! And you say I'm the drama queen." Annabeth rolls her eyes. Piper must sense that she's actually a little more bothered about it than she's putting on, because her face softens, and she squeezes her shoulder. "Hey, chin up, all right? It'll probably be fine."

Thing is, it's not fine.

After the first time, Annabeth tells herself to grow up and get used to it. It's a pain in the ass but there are far worse things going on in the world – and her own life – to be concerned with. She just needs to get over herself.

At least, that's what she tells herself, until the next morning when she is late to first period, because she hadn't realised retrieving her belongings from the reception was going to be a daily thing. She walks away with a detention slip in her pocket and her fists clenched.

The utter nerve of this asshole! Not only is this inconveniencing her in her studies, but her perfect record is also getting ruined as well. She's only had a handful of detentions in high school so far and she will be damned if some actor thinks he can just waltz right in and tarnish her reputation as a good student. She's pretty sure she could put in a pretty wicked complaint if she so wished: when they first started filming at Merriweather, the crew had promised to be as little an inconvenience as possible, and she thinks something like this would register as a pretty frigging huge one.

By the third time, she is ready and entirely willing to start busting heads. She remembers the note that the person had folded up and pinned to the back of the locker with Piper's magnet. Before she can even properly think it through, she pulls her notebook out of her backpack and rips out a page.

Change the locker, please. That isn't a question.

She doesn't even fold it, lets her angry lettering hang loose so there is no missing it when this asshole next opens her locker. She slams it shut and stalks off, smouldering.

That'll show him.

But then, the next morning, instead of her books, there's a new note.

No can do, sorry! Continuity, and that jazz. I realise it was probably not great of me to steal it from you so I left you a roll-pop.

Annabeth frowns, and then slowly produces the lime roll-pop that's lying in the middle of her locker. She can't even fathom it. This kid seriously thinks a lollipop is going to make up for the disturbance that his presence now is in her life? Seriously?

Before she can think, she scribbles out her own response, and throws the lollipop in the trash on her way out.

I'm allergic to lime.

Cherry?

Also allergic to cherry.

Wow, sad life.

Seriously. Change the locker. This is inconveniencing me in my studies to keep having to rescue my stuff from the reception.

Annabeth jerks awake to the sound of shouting.

For a few moments, her brain lags behind: what time is it? What's going on? Was I asleep? Then she catches sight of the alarm clock that she hasn't used for the past three months reading 7:42 and thinks, oh shit!

She flies out of bed like a whippet, tripping over her shoes in her haste. How the hell did she oversleep? The irony is not lost on her in the slightest. She forgoes a shower, just splashes water in her face and under her armpits, and picks up the first pair of jeans she sees on her bedroom floor. As she hurriedly gets changed, her mind flies over the previous evening: she thinks she remembers nodding off somewhere around five, but she'd woken up twenty minutes later with a crick in her neck and a sore ass from sitting in the sill – is it possible she'd fallen asleep again? She's never ever getting that cocky with her alarm clock ever again.

"Damn it," she hisses, as she haphazardly shoves all her books in her bag. The screaming that had woken her up only gets louder: it's coming from downstairs, Bobby, sounds like, and she thinks she can also hear Athena, too, shouting at him to be quiet and eat his breakfast, and now Matthew's crying as well.

She brushes her teeth at the same time as she crams on her shoes and runs a comb through her hair, and flies down the stairs like a whippet. She glances at the time, five minutes to her train, shoot, grabs an apple from the fruit bowl, is about to run out of the door when—

"Annabeth?" Athena shouts from the living room. "Can you come here, please?"

Annabeth barely suppresses a scream. "Mom, I need to leave, I'm late—"

"Can you not defy me right now?"

She inhales, holds for three, breathes out. Then she walks in. "What?"

Athena is stood at the head of the table, in her customary pantsuit, charcoal grey this time, but it has a dark seeping stain down the front. Annabeth hasn't seen her this frazzled in a very long time. Her hair is escaping its sleek bun, and she's only wearing one earring, the other in her hand. Bobby and Matthew are sat next to her, wailing, tears pouring down their cheeks.

"Can you tell your brothers to just eat their breakfast?" Athena snaps, as she feels around for her ear, trying to put her earring through. "They're not listening to me."

Annabeth stares at her, and then looks down at what they're eating. She frowns. "Is that cereal?"

"What does it look like?"

"And you used cow's milk?"

Athena stares at her like she's gone mad. "Yes?"

"Are you serious?"

"What?"

"They're lactose intolerant! They can't have cow's milk!"

Athena's hand pauses. "What?"

"How do you not know this?"

"I tried to tell her," Bobby sobs.

Annabeth can't believe what's happening. She is going to be late, damn it, she can't deal with this right now! "Are you serious? We have soya milk for this exact reason!"

Athena has the audacity to look like this is her fault. "Why did no one tell me?"

Annabeth gapes at her. "Tell you— you're their mother!" She turns to Bobby and Matthew. "Where's Dad? Why isn't he making you breakfast?"

"He had to go in early for work," Matthew says.

Frustratedly, Annabeth rakes a hand through her hair, and checks her phone. Two minutes until the train, now. She's definitely missed it. "How much have they eaten?"

"I don't know! Half a bowl?"

She cannot believe this. "Well, they can't go to school. They're gonna be sick."

Athena stares at her, and the looks at Bobby and Matthew. "I didn't know."

Annabeth knows that she should just leave it, that she should get the twins cleaned up and sorted and then get to school like she's meant to be doing right now, but for some reason she feels something inside of her snap. "That's the problem! You don't know, Mom! You never know, because you're not around!"

"Don't you dare start on me—"

"Why are you even here? Does it make you feel good knowing that once a month you take a break from your shiny upper-class laugh and pop in with your reject family—"

"Annabeth—" Athena shouts, but Annabeth finds she can't stop.

"All you do is just come home and mess things up!"

"How dare you speak to me like that? I am your mother!"

"Then act like it, you selfish bitch," Annabeth shouts, and suddenly it's like the all the air has been sucked out of the room and everyone falls dead silent. Her chest seizes with panic. She hadn't meant to say that aloud.

Even Bobby and Matthew have shut up, staring at her with wide damp eyes. From the front of the room, Athena simply stares at her, mouth open. The hand holding her earring has frozen by her ear. It is as though all the air has been sucked out of the room, preserving them in this terrible tableau forever. Annabeth feels something like panic, ugly and white-hot, crawl up her oesophagus. She's never spoken to her like that before.

Just looking at her, at the stain on her pantsuit and the wisps of hair escaping her bun, suddenly has Annabeth feeling very, very tired. She sets her jaw, and tightens her grip on the strap of her bag.

"I need to go to school," she says, quieter. "Sort them out, they're your kids."

And then she's gone.

As she thought, she's missed her train, and also the one after it, but honestly she can't even find it in her to care, so she sits at the station and puts her head in her hand and tells herself to just keep breathing as she waits for the next one. Her hands are trembling a little.

It's the same old story, every single time. Athena just swoops in for a day, tries to slot herself back in their lives, but then something always goes wrong, real life encroaches too close, as she realises the magnitude of what she has returned to, and then she disappears for another month. Annabeth is sick of it. She's sick of having to put together the pieces when Bobby and Matthew ask where Mom's gone and when she'll be back, or when Frederick awkwardly corners her in the kitchen and asks if she's heard from her mother. She's sick of it. Athena keeps walking this awkward tightrope between being present and being gone, like an intangible projection, and at this point Annabeth would rather she just leave for good, rather than appearing bimonthly for two days and screwing things up further.

Her eyes prickle with tears, and she swipes at them furiously.

Whatever. She'll be gone soon enough. Then her life can go back to normal.

By the time Annabeth reaches the school, she's already half an hour late, so she decides it probably won't hurt to make a quick pitstop at the drugstore on the way in, just for some Tylenol; she's had a faint headache at the base of her skull since she woke up, but sitting for twenty minutes on a train swallowing tears has only made it worse, and she knows she won't be able to get through an entire period of oral presentations with a migraine. Outside the store, she ducks into an alley, prises open the packet. Take 2 every 4-6 hours, it says, so she takes three, swallows them down with a sip from her water bottle, and then heads into school.

Her mood only sours further when she's stopped at the doors and given a late slip, and then again when she enters her Calculus class and Mr Ryerson calls out her lateness in front of the whole room, then demands she solve the current problem on the board before she sits down. It's not particularly hard, and she knows it, but the Tylenol hasn't kicked in and her head is still pounding so she can't work out an answer and instead just stands there, like an idiot. After a few moments of floundering Ryerson thankfully lets her sit down but it's just so humiliating that she has to bite her tongue hard to stop the frustrated tears that have welled up in her eyes from spilling down her cheeks. Across the room, she can see Thalia give her a concerned look, but she pointedly ignores it. She can't do sympathy right now.

By the time breaktime rolls around, all she wants to do is lock herself in a bathroom stall and have a cry, but fate clearly is not with her on this, because before she can slink off, Thalia grabs her arm. "Hey," she says, "what was that?"

Annabeth feigns ignorance. "What was what?"

"You being late! I only showed up to Calculus today because you're always on my case about skipping it and then you're not there yourself!" She jostles their arms together. "What's with that, huh? It doesn't feel the same when you're not next to me correcting my working out."

"That's because you refuse to learn the trig ratios."

Thalia scoffs, like this is a wholly unreasonable request. "Yeah, cos trig is a sin. Also I have a tan." She frowns. "Couldn't work it in naturally."

"It's pronounced sine, but A- for effort."

"Whatever, at least I showed up on time. Did you get a detention?"

Annabeth flaps the late slip at her half-heartedly, and Thalia crows, snatching it up like gold.

"Ha! Didn't think I'd ever see one of these in your goody two-shoes hands."

Annabeth snatches it back. "Whatever. I need to get it stamped at reception."

"Come with me to the cafeteria first? I promised we'd meet Piper there and I want a bagel."

Annabeth lets Thalia drag her along. By now, the painkillers have set in, and her migraine has settled to something of a faint thump at the base of her skull, but she still feels tired and stretched too thin, ready to snap at any sort of pressure. Oblivious, Thalia navigates the crowded hallways, pushing past people until they find Piper sat at one of the tables by herself, on her phone. When she sees them coming she brightens.

"Hey, ladies," she says. "Annabeth, nice to see you've finally rocked up."

"Overslept," Annabeth mutters, sliding into the seat across from her.

"I'm sure," Piper says, agreeably. She catches Thalia's wrist as she passes to get her bagel, blinks up through her lashes at her. "Get me something too?"

"Get your own food, I'm not your slave."

Piper is unbothered, just lets her wrist go and watches as she pushes towards the queue.

"What about your big actor paycheque?" Annabeth says. "Are we going to start reaping the benefits soon?"

Piper clutches her chest. "I'm beginning to think all you're with me for is my money and celebrity."

"Well, it's not your charming personality," Annabeth says, and squawks when Piper kicks her under the table. "Hey! Also, nice of yourself to call it 'celebrity'."

"Shut up, I'm totally a celebrity. Who's the one with sixty thousand Instagram followers between us?"

"Wow, sixty thousand followers. Call the press, we have a certified A-lister within our midst."

"Don't be jealous, it's not a good look." She kicks her again, but affectionately this time, and when Annabeth tries to kick her back she traps her foot between both of her own, keeping it there. "Seriously, is everything okay? It's not like you to be late."

Annabeth shakes her head. "Yeah, it's fine, just—stress, you know."

Piper's gaze feels almost too-knowing. "At home?"

Annabeth picks at a stray sugar packet, not meeting her eyes. "I can handle it, it's not a big deal."

"Is it your mom?"

She shrugs.

"You know you can talk to us, yeah?"

"Yeah, I know. It's nothing. I'll be fine."

"Okay," Piper says, but she doesn't look like she totally believes her. "Just—my window's open anytime."

Annabeth smiles at her gratefully. "Thanks, Pipes."

"What are we talking about?" Thalia says, appearing over her shoulder. She drops into the seat across from them, half a bagel hanging out of her mouth. "Is Piper spilling Argo secrets?"

Annabeth frowns. "Have you already eaten half your bagel?"

Piper mimes zipping her mouth. "Locked vault, me."

"Is that judgment?" Thalia says to Annabeth. "They're good bagels."

"You are a garbage disposal."

Thalia sticks out her tongue, showing a mouthful of half-chewed bread, and Annabeth cringes away.

"Put that away, you're offending everyone."

"You're offending everyone," Thalia mutters, but she dutifully swallows before she next speaks. "Does anyone have any news? Any boy updates? Piper? How's Bookstore Boy?"

Piper blushes. "He's all right."

"Have you asked him out yet?"

"No." Shyly: "I think I might soon, though."

Annabeth and Thalia crow. "Way to go!" Annabeth says, bumping their ankles together. "He's an idiot if he says anything other than yes."

Piper glows under their praise. "Thanks, guys."

"What are you thinking?" Thalia says. "Ambushing him after work? Name-dropping your celebrity status?"

"I'm not going to ambush him," Piper says, though her ears are pink. Annabeth has never been so glad she cannot read minds. "And I don't want to tell him about that just yet, I don't want to scare him away. I just—I feel like it's the right time, you know? Life is too short for me to worry about this sort of thing."

"Atta girl!" Thalia says, and gives her a high-five, before turning to Annabeth. "What about you, Beth? Any new men in your life?"

"Not really," Annabeth says.

Piper points at her. "Not totally true! What about your locker buddy?"

"Who?" Thalia says.

Annabeth rolls her eyes. "I'm not thinking about a relationship with him, don't be stupid."

"Annabeth's sharing a locker with one of the crew members of Argo this season," Piper tells Thalia, smugly. "It's true love."

"It's not—" Annabeth starts exasperatedly, but Thalia cuts her off with an incredulous, "You're sharing your locker? And you haven't killed him yet?"

"They exchange love notes," Piper drawls.

"Oh, you would," Thalia crows, "in between your books, between classes, oh, Annabeth, prove Pythagoras theorem, let me leave evidence on my love pressed delicate between the pages of my molecular biology textbook—"

Piper bursts into peals of laughter, and Annabeth rolls her eyes as she stoops to pick up her bag so hard her headache comes back in full force. It's only slightly worth it, for the way Piper and Thalia snigger at her.

"Whatever," she says, and stands. "I'm gonna go before you embarrass yourselves anymore."

"Give him kisses from us!" Piper calls, and Thalia smacks her lips together so loudly some kids on the table behind them turn around. Annabeth flips them off as she leaves, and the last thing she hears before she exits is them bursting into laughter again.

Talking to them was a welcome reprieve, and enough to momentarily alleviate her migraine, but as soon as she steps out of the cafeteria into the quiet hallways that always smell damply of spoiled milk, it's like being doused with cold water. And now she has to go and get her late slip stamped at reception, who are always going to have questions: especially when they see it's her. She's trying not to make a habit of being late, but she knows that this isn't the first time, not recently, and she's really not up for that particular interrogation.

Miss Hestia, the kind lady who does admin, gives her a sympathetic look when she comes in.

"Late again, Annabeth?" she says.

Annabeth doesn't meet her eyes, just scribbles her name in the admin book with probably more force than necessary. "Sorry," she says. "Overslept."

Miss Hestia takes the book from her, frowns a little at Annabeth's chicken scrawl. The look she gives her is far too knowing. "This is happening a lot, recently," she says gently.

"Am I going to get a detention?"

Hestia gives her a long look. Finally, she sighs. "No," she says, "I'll keep this between us."

"Thanks." Annabeth makes a move to leave, before she realises that while she's here, she may as well also collect her things: it'll skip the middle man, at least, of her unnecessarily checking her locker. "Can I have my books as well?"

Hestia frowns at her. "Your books?"

Every other day she's just given them straight over. Annabeth's brow creases. "Yeah, weren't they handed in here last night for filming?"

"The young man took them back afterwards."

Annabeth pauses. "What?"

Hestia mistakes her surprise for concern. "Why, are they missing?"

"Uh..." Annabeth feels strangely struck. "Uh, no, I haven't checked, yet."

"Well, they're probably there, then." Hestia smiles at her, and hands her a late slip. "Have a good day, Annabeth." Her voice feels almost too knowing, like she is peeling back the layers and looking right into Annabeth and her fleshy vulnerable heart to the chasm where she's keeping all her secrets.

Once upon a time Annabeth was nice to teachers like Hestia. Today, she just takes the slip and says, "You too." The light in Hestia's eyes dims a little, but she simply nods at her, and Annabeth shoves it in her pocket and heads out.

She doesn't have the time to dwell on that, anyway, not when her locker mate has apparently returned her books to her locker. It feels so out of character for this person she's created from what titbits he's let seep into his notes – mainly that he's a pain in the ass and has a seemingly unlimited supply of roll-pops – that she doesn't even dare believe it's true. Her mind spins as she mechanically heads up the stairs to the science department. He's probably just playing a prank on her – not ill-intentioned, he doesn't seem to be malicious – but inconvenient in a way he probably can't understand, because he's making money under-acting in a shaky-camera web series, and probably thinks that she'll find it funny if he puts her books in a trashcan, or something, probably not understanding just how frustrating and unfunny it would be instead. She's going to get to her locker and it'll be empty, except for a snide note or something, check the bin in room 43!, and then she's going to have to fish all her textbooks and her expensive graphing calculator out of a trashcan, and it's going to be covered in someone's yoghurt, or the remnants of a Lucozade, or whatever.

That fits the person she's constructed. There will probably be a roll-pop in the locker too, just to add insult to injury, in a flavour she likes. He's been unfairly good at that.

Yeah. That's probably what happened.

She reaches her locker, and pauses. Then she opens it.

Her textbooks are all neatly arranged against the back of it like they always are. They're even still in alphabetical order. Her notebook and her calculator are piled on top of each other in front of them – and, resting on top of them, is a folded-up piece of paper.

Annabeth takes it.

I didn't realise it was disrupting your school work. Sorry.

Her bad mood dissipates out of her in a rush. She stares at it, feeling the paper crinkle between her hands. He's even drawn a little doodle next to it, an apologetic-looking face without a nose and hair that sticks up straight like forks. It's so goofy and seems so sincere that she can't even bring herself to muster up the energy to throw away the roll-pop, which she also produces from her locker.

She stares at it as she rolls it between her fingers. It's grape. Her favourite flavour. She hasn't had one of these for years.

For the first time, she doesn't throw the note away. Instead, she folds it, tucks it next to the late slip in her pocket, and unwraps the roll pop.

(It'd be a waste if she didn't.)

Something changes, after that.

Annabeth still doesn't like her locker-mate, not exactly – but she doesn't resent him anymore. Knowing that she doesn't have to make a daily pitstop at the reception definitely is a contributing factor, but she thinks it's also something else. There's something almost comforting about sharing a locker, like they're simply co-existing alongside each other. She thinks he's noticed that she's not as anal about it, anymore, because then he starts leaving things behind: mainly notes, but sometimes other pieces of confectionary, like roll-pops and wrapped humbugs and pieces of toffee. She never responds, but it's still almost weirdly nice, to open her locker in the mornings and find something waiting for her.

The only indication she gives that she's actually engaging is that she never leaves them in the locker, always takes them out. Still, if she thought that would dissuade him, she was mistaken: if anything, the notes seem to get more and more frequent, like he's trying to goad her into responding.

Drew this while I was waiting for my scene, hope u enjoy :^)

Did you know that if you cut off the arm of a starfish it would grow right back? How cool is that?

I was so bored during filming that I taught myself three letters in Morse code.

Catering tonight had ice cream, but I'm also pretty sure you would actually explode if you found a melted ice cream cone in your locker, so liquorice! Hope u aren't throwing these away btw 167, that would be pretty heartbreaking :^)

She isn't, though she'd never tell him. The sweets are usually pretty small, just something he probably nicked off one of the catering tables during filming, so most mornings she's become accustomed to enjoying them during first period. She puts them in her mouth and then just sits there and lets it dissolve on her tongue, filling her mouth with sweetness. Especially since now she's taken to missing breakfast, because she just can't stand to be at home any longer than she has to, and having something, albeit small and pretty unhealthy, is enough to make her morning just a little less terrible.

Then one day, she pulls her textbooks out of her locker, and is completely unprepared for the onslaught of crumbs that comes with them. They spill out all down her front and all over the floor, and when she glances at the bottom of her books she finds that some have even wormed between the pages.

Dear God. And just when she was beginning to warm to him as well.

"Jeez, Bethie," Piper says with a laugh, as she watches Annabeth crossly sweep the rest of the crumbs from out of the locker. "Do you have a bakery back there?"

"It wasn't me," Annabeth mutters, exasperated. They have even managed to get into the very back. Did he empty an entire tin of Panko in there or something?

Piper frowns. "Someone broke in your locker and filled it with crumbs?"

"No, it was my locker-buddy."

"Oh, right." Piper's face eases in realisation. "The criminal castmate strikes again." She leans against the locker next to her, watching as Annabeth scrapes the last remnants that have fallen into the corners. "How's that going, by the way? Didn't you say that he started bringing your books back?"

"Right, yes, the bare minimum of basic decency."

"Ooh, crabby, crabby," Piper says. She pokes Annabeth's nose. "Do I spot a Sulky Susan?"

Annabeth swats her away. "Stop speaking like that, it's weird."

"I jest, I jest. And don't worry, I do get it. You know Thalia left a doughnut in my drawer last month? I found it last night! I don't even know how it ended up in there."

Annabeth initially plans on just leaving it, but something inside of her almost convulses at the thought of this going any further and ending up with something much worse in her locker, like juice, or milk, or any sort of perishable food, and before she can really think it through, she's ripping out a page from her notebook and scrawling out a note.

You left crumbs in my locker.

The next morning, there's a response.

Are you also allergic to those?

It's unsanitary.

I think they fell out of my notebook. I ate a muffin over it.

Why was your notebook in my locker?

TV realism. Don't you watch the show?

No.

I hear from an insider source that it's actually pretty good.

I don't have any time. I'm too busy cleaning bagel crumbs out of my locker.

Ouch! I probably deserved that. Do lemon sherbets make it up?

By the time Annabeth arrives to History, Piper and Thalia are already in deep conversation, Piper with an arm hooked over the back of her chair so she can talk to Thalia behind her. Annabeth can't estimate a guess from their expressions, but as she approaches she hears Thalia say, "Just say that you're famous" and figures that she probably doesn't have to know to know that she should step in before the advice gets any worse.

"Hey, guys," she says, as she swings into the seat next to them, resting her bag on her table. "What's going on?"

Thalia turns to her immediately. "Can you tell Piper to stop being a drama queen?"

"That's a leading question!" Piper protests.

"I don't need to be asked a leading question to know that you are being a drama queen," Annabeth says, and Piper frowns in outrage. Annabeth turns to Thalia. "What's going on?"

Thalia cocks a thumb at Piper. "Little Miss Fuss over here is going to ask out Hot Bookstore Boy today and she's freaking out."

Piper makes a sound of indignation. "I'm not freaking out!" she says, looking exactly like someone who is freaking out. Annabeth doesn't think she's seen her hair or clothes this rumpled since she started on Argo and the producers stepped in to make her look less like a homeless man living under a bridge. "I just want this to be perfect."

"And it will be," Annabeth soothes. "What are you so worried about?"

Piper stares at her, like she's insulted she even asked. "Uh, so many things? What if he says no?"

"Oh, like he'll say no, come on."

"You don't know that!"

"Piper," Thalia cuts in, "he hand-made you a bookmark on Valentine's Day. There is not a single planet in this universe in which he says no. Come on. Don't be stupid."

"I'm not stupid," Piper argues, but the harsh line of her shoulders has dropped, a little. She runs her thumbnail under the line of her lip. "You really think so?"

"Yes," Annabeth says emphatically.

"And if worse comes to worst," Thalia says, "just drop the I'm famous card."

Annabeth rolls her eyes, but before she can say anything further their teacher Ms Dodds walks in. They exchange one last look – mainly involving Piper looking distressed and Annabeth trying to convey you are brilliant! through her eyebrows (Thalia has already put her head on her desk to nap) – before turning to face the front, as Ms Dodds starts the class.

With a sigh, Annabeth lifts her bag into her lap and starts pulling out all her equipment for the lesson. It isn't until she produces an unfamiliar blue textbook that she has no recollection of ever purchasing that she realises that something is wrong.

"Miss Chase," says a voice, and when she sharply glances up she sees Ms Dodds looming over her shoulder, her lips twisted with a sneer. "You are aware that this is US History, aren't you?"

Bewildered, Annabeth stares down at the Astrophysics emblazoned across the front of the book. She doesn't even take Physics, let alone Astrophysics. Where the hell did this come from? "Uh," she says, trying to keep the confusion out of her voice, "...yes?"

Ms Dodds simply rolls her eyes, and taps her fingers against the front of the book. "Then I suggest you put this away, and turn to page sixty-four like the rest of your classmates."

Annabeth nods quickly, feeling her cheeks flush, and digs around in her backpack, praying that she somehow also picked up her History textbook. Thankfully, it's there, and she retrieves it with a sigh of relief, but as she flips to the correct page and listens to Ms Dodds settle into her customary drone, her mind whirs. She nudges the Astrophysics book out from under it and stares at the cover, like it'll somehow give her answers to wherever it came from. It doesn't seem too dissimilar to something she'd pick up from the library, but she hasn't visited in weeks, and she never checks books out anymore, it gives her an excuse to stay late and miss dinner. Curiously, she flips open the first page, to see if she can find an owner.

In blue Biro on the inside cover, someone has scrawled property of Argo crew and cast.

That's that, then. It must be a prop textbook from the set – though that doesn't explain how it ended up in her possession. She's sure the props department would be pretty anal about textbooks getting loose, especially since out of everything, they'd probably be the most likely to go missing, with how innocuous they are in a school environment. Piper got enough grief when she tried to sneak out with some barrettes, so Annabeth isn't sure how she managed to get away with stealing an entire textbook.

Then she realises. It must have been her locker-mate.

He mentioned that he put his notebook in the locker – he probably also put in some prop textbooks, as well, and he must have left them behind when he put the rest of Annabeth's stuff in. This morning she had sort of done a blind grope for her books as she also tried to wrangle on a jumper, so she must have accidentally pulled out one of the prop books alongside all her actual work.

For some reason, it's sort of—weirdly endearing, to know that he accidentally left behind one of the props. There wasn't a piece of candy this morning, either, just a quick doodle of a person looking in horror at a row of empty tables. Underneath, he had written horror movie come to life: no candy at catering last night, hope you can forgive me with a sad face. She smiles down at the book, before she realises what she's doing, and slams it shut.

God, what? Is she getting sentimental over a boy being forgetful? Jeez. She needs to pull herself together.

Still, she can't help it, when, after class, she makes a quick detour to her locker, and leaves behind another note.

I think you left a textbook.

The next morning, there's a response.

Yeah, sorry! Didn't mean to lol. Got in trouble for doing that.

She fingers it, thoughtfully. This is normally where she just leaves it. Aside from a few exceptions, she usually doesn't respond, just takes the candy from the locker – a jolly rancher this time, orange, her favourite – and folds the note into her back pocket. But something about this time makes her almost want to: objectively, she's always known that whoever is at the other end of this correspondence is a living, breathing human, but something as inane as finding one of his textbooks that he's probably spent hours staring at as they did take after take has weirdly humanised him, made him tangible in a way weeks of notes and candies couldn't. For the first time, she is aware that whoever doing all this is an actual person.

She hesitates – and then reaches for her notebook.

Do you do Physics?

It's the most pathetic of olive branches, but she can't think of anything else. Already regretting it, she scrunches it up tightly and tucks it in the very back corner, a part of her hoping that maybe he won't notice, and then heads off to her next lesson and tries to put it at the very back of her mind.

But then, the next morning, there's a response.

Nope, just another part of TV realism. I'm awful at school.

This, Annabeth thinks, is where it begins.

Is that why you're an actor?

Do I sense judgment, 167? I'll have you know that acting is one of the most reliable, respectable professions out there, along with doctors and lawyers ;-D no I'm kidding, yeah, sort of! Wasn't super great at academics so I thought I'd give theatre a try, and so far I think it's been going ok. What about you, are you a science nerd? I'm guessing so, based on all the books you have in your locker.

I like Maths. A bit of Physics, too.

Does that mean you can understand any of the garbage in that textbook I left behind? Because wow. That's pretty sick. Would you want to go into Physics, then, when you graduate? Become and astronaut and inhabit Mars?

I don't know if I want to. Space sort of scares me.

Really?

The concept of infinity makes me feel weird. I don't really know how to explain it.

No, I kind of get it.

You do?

Sort of. I mean, 'infinity' is just a weirdass idea if you think about it too long.

You know there's a number called Graham's number, that's meant to encapsulate the size of the universe. If it was possible to put every single digit of it in our minds it would literally make our brains explode because it is so large it is beyond comprehension.

Whoa.

Sorry.

No, it's cool! I mean, freaky, and now I think I'm also a bit scared by infinity, but cool. I take it not Physics, then?

Probably not. I think I'd like to go into something like architecture instead, the less theoretical part of Math. Shapes and stuff. I'd like to make something permanent.

Isn't that a bit like infinity, though?

Slow infinity. Infinity in one direction. I won't have to be there for it.

Deep.

I guess.

It's pretty cool, though, that you like architecture. I wish my brain could do that stuff. Instead I just have to lug around these textbooks and stare at them on set and pretend they make any sense.

Annabeth reads over the latest note with a small smile on her lips. She traces over it's pretty cool, wryly. She's honestly not sure what brought her to tell him all this stuff – stuff about her fear of infinity and her desire to become an architect, stuff she doesn't think she's told anyone – but something about his casual, simple acceptance of it, soothes the edge in the back of her mind that she hadn't realised was rubbed raw. She folds it carefully, slides it carefully between the pages of her notebook, and then for the first time notices the Astrophysics book.

She huffs out a laugh. This is the third time it's made its appearance in her locker in as many weeks. Annabeth smiles a little fondly at the sight of it, crammed alongside her belongings, and pulls it out, admiring the front cover. At this point she feels like she sees it more than she sees some of her own.

"What is that?" says a voice over her shoulder, and when she turns she sees Thalia peering down at the book warily, like if she gets too close it'll bite her. "Astrophysics? What the hell?"

"Light reading," Annabeth says.

Thalia points at her. "You can't even joke about that, because I am never sure when it comes to you. For all I know you could be reading up on Astrophysics in your free time. I mean, does Merriweather even offer Astrophysics? Where did you get that from?"

Annabeth laughs, and slots it back in, instead pulling out all her books for her upcoming classes. "It's a prop book. My locker-mate left it behind." She quickly tears out a sheet of paper from her notepad, scribbling you left your book again on it before scrunching it up and throwing it in. When she glances up, she sees Thalia is giving her a significant look. "What?"

"You make life so very entertaining," she says, bizarrely, but before Annabeth can ask what that's supposed to mean, she leans against the locker next to hers, and folds her arms. "Hey, do you want to hang out later night, by the way? Me, you, Piper?"

Annabeth frowns, closing her locker. "Doesn't Piper have her date with Hot Bookstore Boy today?"

"She does? Wow, I would not have known, it's not like she's mentioned it every three minutes so far." Thalia rolls her eyes, but not without affection. "Yeah, she does, but after. We can do a recon mission and discuss further proceedings." Then she shrugs, wholly unself-consciously. "Also I feel like we haven't hung out properly, the three of us."

Annabeth smiles. On the surface, Thalia is the strangest of contradictions, but at the end of the day, at her core, she's a genuinely really, really good friend. "Yeah, that sounds great. What time are you thinking?"

"Not sure, probably around seven or eight? They should be done with the date by then, right? Lover-boy's picking her up at five, it can't last any longer than that."

"Unless they go home together."

"I don't have that much faith in her," Thalia says. "Besides, you think someone who works in a bookstore is the kind to take someone home on the first date? Come on. He wears polos. They probably won't get any further than a chaste porch kiss."

"You never know, book nerds can be all sorts of freaky where you wouldn't expect it."

"Ooh, and you'd know, yeah? What kind of freak are you under the sheets, Chase? Do you get really kinky and bust out the gradient function graphs?" She playfully snaps the waistband of Annabeth's jeans with a snigger, and Annabeth swats her away. "Sorry, kidding, couldn't resist. So, tonight? Sound like a plan?"

Annabeth smiles. "Yeah, that sounds good."

Thalia looks pleased at this. "Great," she says, and slings an arm around her shoulders as they both start to move away from the lockers to their next class. "By the way, did you end up writing that essay for old Alexander? And can I copy it?"

When Annabeth gets home that afternoon, she knows something is wrong.

The house has always been too big for them, it was passed down from Frederick's father, but it never seemed to fit them well, like it was an ill-fitting jumper that a mother insisted they'd grow into. But they never did, instead they grew like tumours inside of it. There are four of them but sometimes Annabeth swears it is like they are all ghosts, because the house never responds to them.

That's how it feels now, when she steps inside, and feels the house take a breath, a sigh. It is a lot emptier than it was that morning: Bobby and Matthew both eating toast, this time, and Athena smouldering at the head of the table like look what I have achieved? She doesn't eat in the mornings. Annabeth loathes being anything like her mother but she doesn't, either. Now it just feels a lot larger, like it was beginning to accommodate to a family that suddenly disappeared.

Annabeth isn't surprised when she passes the spare room and it is completely empty, the coverlet folded down like no one was there at all.

There's a note in the kitchen, predictably: I had to go back to New York. I'll see you at Christmas. Love you. Annabeth wonders why she writes that: she never says it. She just crumples it up and throws it in the bin, then fishes her phone out of her pocket.

Athena picks up the phone on the third ring. "Athena Chase, speaking."

"You're still going by Chase?" Annabeth says, caustic.

"Annabeth," Athena says. She always has a habit of making Annabeth's name sound like a chore. "I wasn't expecting you to call. I left a note in the kitchen."

"I know."

There is a long pause. Annabeth presses the tip of her nail against the edge of her lip. She feels the jagged edge where she chewed it off this morning catch, like razors.

Athena finally sighs. "Why are you calling?"

"You should have told them this morning," Annabeth says.

"I had to catch my flight."

"You had time."

"You wouldn't understand."

"No, I wouldn't," she says, coldly. "How's John?"

A deadly pause. "He's good."

"You didn't tell Dad?"

"I didn't think it was his business."

"You're still married."

Sharply, Athena says, "Did you have anything else you wanted to talk about, or was that it?"

Annabeth feels herself burn. "No. That's it."

"Have a good day."

I hate you, Annabeth almost says, suddenly, and then feels so ill she hangs up without responding, and switches off her phone for good measure, too. She presses a hand against her stomach, feels her breaths, and closes her eyes so tightly she can see stars. The jagged edge of her nail snags against her lip and she thinks it starts to bleed but for a few moments she just lets it pool against her teeth as she tries to pull herself together.

When she opens her eyes, there is blood around her thumbnail, caught in the webs of her fingers, staining her heartline red. She stares at it, before scrubbing at her stinging lip with the side of her hand and moving to the bathroom to wash her mouth.

Frederick comes home with the twins at around six, the boys chattering about their day as he tries to herd them inside, holding their hockey sticks in his arms. Annabeth sits on the stairs, resting her head against the banister, and watches as they shed their sports gear and charge past her to their bedroom, chanting. Frederick hesitates in the entryway, still laden with bags and lunchboxes and various other hockey paraphernalia.

"Hey," she says, quietly.

"Hey," he says.

He begins to put away their things, awkwardly, because he's still not used to being the one to do this sort of thing. He doesn't know where the hockey sticks are kept, so Annabeth points to the hallway cupboard, and he says, "Of course", like he knew that all along. She just watches him. She feels very tired.

"Did your mother say what time she was getting home?" he says, as he hangs up the last of their coats.

"She left to New York."

He pauses, and then turns to her: she sees it happening in ten frames a second, delayed. "Oh," he says. "Oh."

She didn't tell him, either.

"I bought chicken," he says. "For dinner." For her, probably.

"I can make it," Annabeth says, and he gives her a grateful look.

"Thank you."

Dinner is quiet. The chicken is pretty bland but at least it's cooked all the way through, and the boys cover it in enough ketchup for it to be unnoticeable. There's only just enough for the two of them, so Annabeth and Frederick quietly eat their bland, dry chicken without a word, they just drink lots of water to combat it. Bobby and Matthew mainly talk amongst themselves, and Annabeth lets it be background noise as her brain whites out. The only blip comes when Matthew says, "When's Mom coming home?"

Frederick looks to her. Annabeth says, "she's not."

Matthew frowns. Bobby says, "What do you mean?"

"She's gone back to New York."

"But she said she's be here for our game on Friday."

"Sorry," Annabeth says. They both look down at their plates.

She cleans up after them on autopilot, when they leave the table, loading their plates into the dishwasher and wiping the table, as Frederick awkwardly hovers around her, putting the clean dishes in the cupboards. She scrubs at the tray the chicken was on under a hot tap, and doesn't even realise that it is burning her until she feels the tray go white-hot in her hand. She drops it, and notices her hands are scalded bright pink, the skin around her nails white. Piper's band-aid fell off a few weeks ago, but if she looks hard enough she can still see the nail print, flushed red. She just changes the tap from hot to cold with a sigh.

She feels like she is on a wire, moving driftlessly from room to room. The end of the wire is her bedroom, of course, and she pauses for a moment in the doorway, looking at her bed. She hasn't properly slept in it for a while. She's tried every trick in the book, keeping her work space separate, switching off her phone, going off coffee, but they've all been fruitless. Tonight she just sheds her clothes, slips into her oldest, comfiest pajamas, and slides between the sheets, her back against the wall. She opens her book.

She doesn't know how long she's sat there reading – or not reading, it's been getting more and more difficult to concentrate these days – but she hears the sound of the house falling asleep, the taps in the bathroom switching on and off as the twins brush their teeth, sees through the crack in the door as all the lights gradually all get switched off. The only lights that will remain on will be her lamp, and the basement, where Frederick has retreated and will remain under this time tomorrow. She sighs, and looks out her window. In the dark, her face is reflected back at her. She's been avoiding mirrors, recently, so she hasn't realised just how deep the rings under her eyes have become. Jeez. She swipes a finger under them, as if she can wipe them away like they're smudged makeup. She needs to start using a high coverage concealer.

She turns back to her book. She isn't sure how long she is sat there, long after the sky has turned black and the night has started to whisper – but then it starts to whistle.

It isn't until her windowpane rattles that she realises it's not the night at all, but someone outside her window. She frowns, her brain coming back online, and properly pulls back the curtains to squint down into her backyard. She can only make out a faint outline, so she scrubs at her eyes, tries to rub away at the stars on the back of her eyelid, and peers closer, vision adjusting to the darkness.

In the colder months her window is a little harder to wrangle open, always needs a firm shoulder shove against it, so when it finally bursts open she almost falls out as well. Then she hears a whispered, "Shit!" when she is hit in the face with a dozen pebbles.

Annabeth frowns. "Thalia?"

"Nice of you to answer," Thalia says, coolly. She throws another rock: it hits the side of the window, barely a few inches from the frame. Annabeth doesn't think it's accidental.

She doesn't get it for a few moments, before suddenly she realises. Her eyes widen. "Oh, God."

"Uh-huh." Another rock. "I called you."

Annabeth glances at her phone, still turned off, but also face-down on her dresser, like she's been leaving it most nights, simply letting Piper's customary text silently flit in to be read the next morning. Crap.

"It was switched off," she says pathetically.

Thalia scowls. "Yeah, I got that." Another rock. This one directly hits the frame, and bounces sideways into her room, landing with a clatter on the floor. Annabeth stoops, picks it up, and clenches her fist around it, feeling the edges cut into her palm.

"I'm so sorry, Thalia," Annabeth says, "I—"

But she's run out of lies, so all she can do is just stare at her helplessly. Thalia holds her gaze for a few long moments, before she sighs, drops the rest of the pebbles, and then turns to leave. For a heart-stopping moment Annabeth thinks that she has really messed up this time, and Thalia's leaving, until, at the very end of the garden, she half-turns, and raises an eyebrow expectantly. "Well?"

Annabeth needs no prompting. She flies out of bed to retrieve her jacket, quickly glancing in the mirror at her current outfit – an old periodic table shirt from her dad, and a pair of plaid pants – should be fine – before shrugging on her coat, sliding her feet into her trainers, and then slips out of the window. By the time she lands in the grass, the dew stinging her exposed ankles, Thalia is out of the gate, holding it open for her, and Annabeth hurries over, tucking her cold hands into her pockets.

"I'm so sorry," she says.

Thalia just rolls her eyes, and produces a McDonalds bag from the confines of her jacket. "Here."

Annabeth takes it hesitantly. "Without salt?"

"Duh."

"Where's Piper?"

"She's staying the night with Bookstore Boy."

"Oh."

Thalia catches her line of thinking. "Not for that. They're watching the stars, or some shit."

"That's romantic."

"Whatever."

It's the closest she's gonna get to forgiveness right now, so Annabeth takes it.

They end up in a children's jungle gym ten minutes away from the station. In the night, if she concentrates, Annabeth can hear the trains pulling in and out. She hasn't been to this park in years, since she was around eight or nine, but Thalia evidently has, with the ease she scales the fence and then the monkey bars, sitting on top of them with the air of someone who has done this before. Not that Annabeth is particularly surprised: if there was any place someone like Thalia was going to romp around in the middle of the night it would probably be somewhere like this. She puts the McDonalds bag between her teeth and climbs up as well, the cold metal pinching at her skin. She'll wake up with blisters on her hands tomorrow, but she can't find it in herself to care.

She pulls herself up, perching on one of the bars, letting her legs hang over the edges, and then hands Thalia the bag as she blows on her hands. Thalia gladly digs in, shoving a handful of fries in her mouth, before rootling around in the pocket of her jacket and pulling out what looks like a baggie of weed.

"Remember the midnight rule," Annabeth reminds. She's only half-serious.

Thalia flashes her phone at her. "It's not midnight yet."

"Close enough."

"Whatever." Thalia rolls her joint, not looking at her. Annabeth watches her.

"I'm really sorry," she says, quietly. She fits her nail into the scar. It is still flushed from where she burned it earlier. "For ditching you. I—things just came up, at home. And I know that's not an excuse, I just—" Her throat closes.

There's a long moment before Thalia speaks, and when she does she just sounds tired. "Are you ever gonna tell us what's going on with you?"

"What do you mean?"

Thalia glances at her. "You think we don't notice?"

Annabeth's throat feels thick. She can't speak. "It—it's not a big deal."

"It is to us."

She should tell her. She should tell her right now, about her mom, and her family, and her crippling fear of meaning nothing in the grand scheme of the universe. She should tell her how it scares her so much she hasn't slept more than four hours a night for the past three months, how sometimes she feels like she can't get out of bed, and how her attendance and schoolwork and now even her friendships are all suffering because of it. It's not particularly shameful, or difficult, but her throat has closed, and she opens her mouth, and nothing comes out. She feels choked.

"Sorry," she manages, finally. Thalia sighs, but resigned, like she'd expected it.

"Don't be sorry," she says, and digs her lighter out of her pocket. "Just—tell us, yeah? We're your friends."

"I know." Thalia doesn't respond, so she says, urgent, "You have to know that I know that, Thalia."

"I do. But—" She exhales. "Don't lie to us. Okay?"

"Today was just a bad day."

"You've been having a lot of those."

"I can't," Annabeth says.

And finally, Thalia seems to get it. She glances at her, holds her gaze for a few moments, before she rolls her eyes. "Oh, come here, you mug." She lifts her arm and Annabeth obediently snuggles in closer, resting a head on her shoulder, finally feeling the tension leave her body. "I'm not mad."

"I know," Annabeth tells her neck mournfully. "I'm just a terrible friend."

"Don't fish."

"I'm not, I'm acknowledging. Not my fault you just want to compliment me all the time."

Thalia digs her cold fingers against the exposed skin of her neck, and Annabeth squeals a little. "Don't be cheeky," she says. "Here, pass me a fry."

Annabeth feeds her one as Thalia lights the joint, and then helps herself to a chicken nugget as Thalia takes a deep drag.

"Jeez," Thalia says, afterwards. "I always forget how miserable your McDonalds order is."

"Not liking salt is valid."

"For Mormons, maybe. Did I remember barbecue sauce?"

"No."

"Damn. Always something. Another fry."

"Please," Annabeth says, but passes her two. Her relief is probably palpable. They are okay. Thalia has forgiven her. No thanks to her, though.

For a few moments, they just sit in silence, legs swinging beneath them. Annabeth loves Piper but there's something so undemanding about Thalia's presence, so unexpectant: she knows that Thalia would be more than happy to just sit here in silence for the rest of the night, doing nothing but picking at the food and slowly burning her way through the joint. Annabeth privately loves this sort of effortless company: simply existing with each other.

Still, though: "Is everything okay?" she says, quietly. Thalia is a weirdo and this isn't the first time she's coerced her out of her bedroom for an impromptu midnight rendezvous, but she still senses that maybe tonight isn't all about her company.

There's a length beat, as Thalia takes a drag, and then exhales, but finally she says, "My mom came home last night."

"Is she okay?"

"Don't know. Didn't exactly stick around for a chat." Thalia makes a sort of reluctantly impressed sound. "Sneaky bitch, that one, she came in when I was at school, must've known I wouldn't have let her in otherwise."

"Where's she now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, mentally?"

"Who the hell knows. Probably outer space."

"And physically?"

"Crashed in one of the spare rooms. I just had to get out of there for a bit before I dealt with that nightmare in the morning, when she wakes up and becomes lucid. Thought I'd at least try delaying it."

Annabeth glances at her, offers her a wry smile. "I'm okay with being a delay."

"Yeah, multiple hours late," Thalia says, but she nudges her back, and gives her a smile. "Thanks, though. Seriously."

"Anytime. You know that."

"Yeah, I do."

There is a pause.

"Life is weird," Thalia decides, finally, and Annabeth snorts.

"You're telling me."

"If you were God for a day, what would you change? I'd zap my mom out of existence."

"End world hunger," Annabeth says, half to be a dick.

Predictably, Thalia scrunches up her face. "Don't be noble. Who'd you zap?"

"You."

"I'm still on the fence about forgiving you, you can't say stuff like that yet. Be honest."

Annabeth takes another fry. "Maybe my mom, too."

This is the only place she trusts enough to say it, and it's mainly because Thalia isn't wholly sober. Just as she hoped, Thalia doesn't press, just nods, and nudges their shoulders. "I'll toast you to that."

"You know," Annabeth says, "somewhere out there, there's a planet where they're both gone." Thalia hums to show that she's listening. "You know alternate universes?"

"Theoretically, I guess. Are you gonna science me?"

"A little. If the universe is infinite then that means everything that can possibly ever happen happens, because what's probability when it goes on forever? Which means there are probably millions and millions of other Earths out there, enough of them that there are probably Annabeths and Thalias out there sitting in a jungle gym just like this except—except Thalia's a ginger."

"Sounds miserable," Thalia says, but her expression is thoughtful. There's a pause. "I like that idea."

"You do?"

"Don't you?"

"Doesn't it make you feel—I don't know, sad?"

"Sad?" Thalia scoffs like Annabeth's just said something truly absurd. "Why would I be sad?"

"Knowing there is so much out there we'll never know. I mean, comparatively we're just a speck of dust to the universe. It doesn't care about us."

"Yeah, but isn't there something kind of liberating about that?"

Annabeth has never thought about it like that. "Liberating?"

"We can do whatever the hell we want, Annabeth. In the grand scheme of things, who cares if I like girls, or... smoke weed, or whatever? Can you imagine how stressful it would be if we mattered that much? What matters to me is you guys. I think that it's pretty rad that we're just a particle of dust."

"How philosophical of you," Annabeth says, but her mind is spinning.

"Come on, lay down with me."

Annabeth opens her mouth to protest, but before she can Thalia has taken her by the shoulders and is forcing her backwards, so they're lying down on top of the monkey bars side by side. Annabeth feels the bars press into her body uncomfortably, one directly under her skull, another by her shoulder blades, and her hips, her knees, but Thalia sighs contentedly as though it's memory foam.

"What are we doing?" Annabeth says.

"Being existential," Thalia says, and takes another drag of her joint as if to emphasise. "Come on, look at the stars with me."

Annabeth rolls her eyes, but she does anyway. It's an uncharacteristically clear night, the sky just wide and deep and dark, but she can only make out a few stars, clustered in a clump near the horizon. She's never thought of the endlessness of the universe as liberating, or whatever, and staring up into it, into its murky depths, like staring down into an ocean, still makes her feel so afraid that for a moment she loses her breath, as she thinks of Graham's number and how it is but a fraction of magnitude of its size and yet it is still beyond human comprehension. But then she looks at the clump of stars and something in her chest shudders a little, and she tells herself to exhale.

"You know what I think, Annabeth?" Thalia says, into the silence. "I think life is too short to worry about things like moms and the universe."

It's easy for you to say, Annabeth wants to tell her, but she doesn't, because she knows it's not.

"I say," Thalia continues, "that we just do whatever the hell we like. Seize the day. Carpe diem, right? The universe can suck it. I say, if it doesn't care about us, we shouldn't care about it." She reaches up, flips the sky off with both hands, her joint between her lips. "Hear that, you piece of crap?"

Annabeth lets out a breathless laugh. She still feels like there is something sitting on her chest, something crushing and pressing, but having Thalia next to her, warm and loose-limbed from the weed, laughing so fearlessly into the face of infinity, eases something in her, even just a little. She tells herself to breathe once, twice, and properly lets herself look at the sky, thinks about how they are specks on a rock hurtling through space and she is staring out into an abyss and how it still terrifies her but if Thalia can find something comforting in it then maybe she can try, too.

Unbidden, her mind for some reason goes to her locker mate, who is thoughtful to leave a note and a piece of candy for her every morning. She thinks maybe it's a problem that she become so used to this unknown presence in her life that she doesn't feel like her day has properly started until she opens her locker. She thinks how he so easily accepted her fear of infinity, how he leaves his textbooks behind and gets in trouble, and she thinks of how big and beautiful and frightening the universe is.

The next morning, she leaves him a note.

You can borrow mine, if you would like.

Really?

If they return even slightly damaged I will end you.

Scout's honour, I will protect them with my life. Update from after: dude, thank you so much! Also, you are a genius. I had a flick through – carefully, don't worry – and JEEZ. Don't even know what half of the words are. I left you an apple ring-pop as a thank-you.

We've graduated to ring pops now?

I recognised that you handing over your textbooks was probably the equivalent of third base. Pretty sure we're now married in some countries. Also considering it's gone – have I finally found a flavour you're not conveniently allergic to?

I threw it away.

May as well have punched me in the face :D I'll find a flavour you like eventually.

You think I'm the kind of girl to settle for a ring-pop?

Two ring-pops.

It's a little concerning where you're getting these from.

What can I say I'm a connoseer conosure connosuer connoseur connoseuir master of ring-pops.

Connoisseur.

DUDE. That doesn't even look like a real word anymore.

I actually had to Google it.

Omg. Look who's no longer Einstein.

You couldn't spell it either.

Sympathy trump card: dyslexia.

Me too. You're not special.

Woah, seriously? And you're doing all this insane stuff in Math? You're showing me up, 167.

Naturally superior.

Of course. Should have known, as the only person to inhabit a locker in the science department.

Don't make fun of me! I was being resourceful.

Yeah, duh, you ended up talking to me.

The last day of school before winter break, Malcolm comes home.

He arrives the day Athena was meant to and a day before he said he would, so when Annabeth comes downstairs in the morning she's surprised to find him in the kitchen peering through the fridge.

"Malcolm?" she says.

He turns, and smiles. "Hey, Beth."

They are not a touchy family, Annabeth can only recall ever hugging the twins a few times, and her parents even less so, but today she can't help it and steps up to wrap her arms around him. "I am so glad you're home," she says, into his shoulder.

His laughter is wry. "That doesn't sound promising." When she pulls back, his expression is troubled. "Is everything okay?"

She shakes her head. "It is what it is," she says simply. "I'm glad you're here."

He still looks bothered, but he runs a hand through her hair. "It's good to be back."

Piper and Thalia are both appropriately pleased about this information: Piper proclaims that he's hot and Thalia says, "Now we can have someone around who can legally buy alcohol", which is nothing short of what Annabeth expected them both to say. They both must understand what it means to her to have him back, though, because both their hugs are a little longer and tighter than normal, and Annabeth can only smile helplessly at them when she pulls back. She never says much about her home life, she hates talking about it, and in the face of a situation like Thalia's, whose mom shows up once in a blue moon and usually only to ask for money, it feels juvenile and pathetic, but she knows they know some of it: Piper was there the first time Athena left, and Thalia joined shortly before the first time she came back. Having her brother come back from college feels like one small aspect of normalcy she can regain as both her parents dance closer and closer to separation. They're like a Newton's cradle in reverse, swinging away further and further each time, until one day they'll pull so hard the strings keeping them together will snap and they'll fly away forever.

The last day of school is pretty much a dud, just a day of teachers setting holiday homework and explaining the upcoming syllabus, so Annabeth sort of just drifts passively between classes, not really paying attention. Her dad keeps his sleeping pills in the uppermost shelf in the bathroom cabinet, so last night she'd filched one: it had worked, and she'd slept over four hours for the first time in months, but she'd woken up sluggish and unable to properly feel her fingers. It takes every last ounce of energy in her to drag herself between classes, and at lunch she drinks three cups of coffee to wake up her up.

Her only saving grace is that she's apparently not the only one feeling the last-day slug. Thalia naps through Chemistry and at lunch swallows probably too many caffeine pills that renders her briefly catatonic for about ten minutes.

"She's going to die by thirty," Piper says, as they watch her do laps around the field. Annabeth doesn't think she's ever seen Thalia willingly run before. "I can't even say what from, either."

"Either that or she'll achieve immortality," Annabeth says, because if anyone would, it would be Thalia, entirely on accident, probably through a mixture of weed, bad life choices and smudgy eye makeup.

Piper hums. "That's also entirely plausible," she says, and then: "Oh, crap, she's trying to climb a tree, come on."

All in all, it's a pretty useless day, and by the end Annabeth is determined to go home and sleep for a hundred years. Before she can leave, though, she has to quickly make a detour to her locker to retrieve her books for the holidays, which she hasn't been to all day, considering most of her lessons were half-hearted Christmas parties. Her mind has been so preoccupied with her parents and Malcolm that she completely forgets about her locker-mate, until she opens it and a sheet flutters out.

She stoops to pick it up.

Happy holidays, Locker 167. Have a good Christmas.

It makes her smile, for the first time all day.

You, too.

Winter break is a quiet, suffocating affair.

Athena arrives two days late, in her work clothes, with a suitcase that is only half-filled. They have dinner, the six of them, for the first time in what likes forever, but for a table full of people it's never been more subdued. Bobby and Matthew chatter on about their days but no one indulges them, because that's usually Annabeth's job and she's just tired now. Athena asks Malcolm about school. He tells them all humorous, impersonal anecdotes. Typical, for a Chase dinner.

Malcolm's staying in her bedroom because Athena is in the spare, so that night the two of them bring in the blow-up mattress and quietly make the bed, tucking in a coversheet and unrolling a duvet. He's had a growth spurt since he went away, so when he lies down his feet stick out over the side.

"It's gotten worse," he says, as he watches Annabeth unfold his pillowcase. "Hasn't it."

It's not really a question. "Yeah."

He blows out a breath. "Do the boys know?"

"Not really. They just know that she doesn't stay long."

That this is the last time goes unsaid, but it is palpable. Athena's never brought a suitcase before, and the last time they'd had pizza was when Malcolm was leaving to college, and Athena mentioned she would be moving out too. Malcolm just nods.

"How's college?" Annabeth says.

He shrugs. "It's college. Hard."

He goes to Yale. Annabeth would like to resent him, sometimes. "I can imagine."

"How's school? Your friends?"

"Good. We're good."

"Anyone special, at the moment?"

Annabeth gives him a look.

"Just curious."

"No one special."

"Okay."

She watches him test out the mattress, resting his head against the pillows. Quietly, she says, "You might see me reading in the night. Sorry if that disturbs you."

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah," she says. "Just... helps me. If I can't sleep."

"Okay," he says. "Me, too, sometimes."

She glances at him. "Yeah?"

"Insomnia is a bit of a Chase thing," he says, with a small smile, and Annabeth thinks of Frederick, in the basement, with his helicopters, and says, "Huh."

It's been hovering for a while, so when, at dinner, Athena announces that she and Frederick are getting divorced, Annabeth is not surprised.

Still doesn't stop it from hitting her like a smack across the face.

She glances at Malcolm, whose face is impassive, and then at the twins, who are frowning at them, half-confused. They know what divorce means, they're nine, but she supposes for them, who they all pretended for, it's sort of registering like the development of a photo. The tears will come later, once it's set in.

Athena's expression doesn't move but Frederick peers at all of them nervously, trying to gauge their reactions. "How do you feel about that?" he says, after a very long silence.

Honestly, Annabeth isn't sure. The only thing she is sure of is that she doesn't think she wants to be here. She stands. "I'm going to go to my room," she says.

Malcolm glances at her. Sharply, Athena says, "Annabeth, we need to talk about this."

"No, we don't," Annabeth says, and leaves before anyone can say anything further. The last thing she hears as she heads up the stairs out of earshot is Athena saying to Malcolm, "Can you speak to your sister, please?" She doesn't stop, just heads straight to her bedroom, slides her feet into her discarded sneakers by the door, pulls a sweater over her head, and slips out of the window. The grass is a little crunchy underfoot, and even though it can't be later than five the sky is already pitch black. She curls her hands into fists and lets her feet carry her away, moving on autopilot to the only place she can think of going.

By the time she reaches Piper's, her teeth are chattering and she thinks her fingers have stiffened into place. They sting as she unfurls them to climb the tree by her window, and then again as she scrabbles at the frame to prise it open.

One thing that Annabeth still hasn't gotten used to regarding Piper and Argo is the fact that Piper now has a surplus of friends other than herself and Thalia. For so long it's just been the three of them that by the time Annabeth has one foot through Piper's window and hears a decidedly male laugh from within the room she realises that Piper may not be alone.

She closes her eyes in frustration. Damn it.

She's just considering the merits of trying to subtly slide back out of the window in the hopes that Piper hasn't seen her yet, but then she hears, "Annabeth!" and realises she's been caught. She freezes, guiltily, and then cranes her neck to peer inside.

Lying stomach-down on her bed is Piper and a boy Annabeth doesn't recognise, though she has a strange niggling in the back of her head that says she should. There's a laptop in front of them, paused. It doesn't look overtly romantic but this could have just been the leadup. Piper is definitely the sort of person to use movies as foreplay. God, if Annabeth cock-blocked her then she really is the worst friend ever.

She decides to try and gauge the situation. "Hello," she says cautiously.

"Hey!" Piper says, cheerfully enough. One con to her being an actor is that she has an excellent poker face. Annabeth can't tell if she's interrupted anything. She glances at the boy, who is smiling at her politely, a little confusedly, which she supposes she can't blame him for her, considering she has a leg and a head through Piper's bedroom window. His expression also belies nothing. Her gaze flicks back to Piper, who is still grinning at her.

Annabeth decides to just bite the bullet. "Am I intruding?"

Piper laughs. "No, this is just Percy. We're just watching our sex scene, come join us!"

Right. Actors. That explains where Annabeth's seen his face before. She slides the rest of the way in, lands in a pile of Piper's laundry, and then hesitantly joins them on the bed. The screen is paused on a shot of Piper midway through lifting her shirt off, the boy next to her, Percy, helping her. Annabeth belatedly that she hasn't introduced herself.

"Uh, Annabeth," she says, and awkwardly holds out her hand.

Percy laughs, and accepts it. He's got a firm handshake, which Annabeth immediately respects. "Percy. Good to meet you."

"You, too," she says. "We're going to get very familiar with each other in a few moments."

"Watching myself have simulated sex is how I make my closest friends," he agrees, and despite herself she laughs.

Though: "Didn't you say your character had lesbian undertones?" she says to Piper. "Why is she having sex with a boy?"

"She does," Piper says, "Percy's just her heterosexual phase." Then suddenly she freezes, and fixes Annabeth with wide eyes. "I mean—what? Lesbian undertones? Where did you—what?" She gives Percy a panicked look.

Percy just laughs. "I won't tell."

Piper visibly deflates. "Thank God. I've been good, I swear."

"Clearly not that good," Percy says, with a grin, and Piper shoves at him.

"Okay, I'm sorry Mr all-my-friends-are-on-the-show-too—"

"They are?" Annabeth says.

Percy glances at her with a small smile. "Yeah," he says. "Chiron did a big casting call at Goode. A couple of us ending up landing the gig."

"I tried to get Annabeth to audition," Piper says, "but she's a stick in the mud."

"Also I can't act," Annabeth says.

"Contingencies," Percy says, and Annabeth smiles at him a little.

Piper resumes the episode, and they fall into a silence as comfortable as silence can be when you are watching the two people you are currently in between having sex onscreen. It's probably weirder in that it isn't all that weird – Annabeth instead finds herself admiring Percy's shoulders, and the fact that every kombucha shot Annabeth sympathy-choked down with Piper seemed to actually have done something to her waistline.

The scene progresses: clearly the characters' first times, they fumble around, giggling, trying to figure out how to work everything. Over her head, Piper and Percy laugh quietly about certain moments, talking about how cold it was in the room, how Piper's shirt snagged on her bra, and between them, Annabeth feels herself soften. She and Piper have been friends long enough that Piper must have sensed something was wrong; Annabeth doesn't show up unannounced often. She's grateful that Piper has just let her fade to the background, loosen on her bed, surrounded by quiet comfort in the way they are speaking to each other, not expecting much of her.

"This was the first scene we ever shot together," Percy says. "That feels like so long ago."

Annabeth hasn't really been listening, just letting their voices fade to a comforting hum as she dozes against Piper's shoulder, but that wakes her up a little. "Really?" she says.

Percy glances at her. His eyes are soft. "Yeah," he says. "Hell of an ice-breaker."

"I remember that," Piper says. "Look, this bit—remember, we had to do this bit so many times?"

On-screen, Percy rolls them over, so Piper is now under him. They're both giggly and a little awkward, Piper now in a bra. Her shoulders are hunched in: it could just be good acting, but with this new information, Annabeth suspects that maybe she was genuinely a little shy. It makes her smile, a little, just watching how Percy is so careful with how he touches her, always hesitating before he does, like he's trying to maintain even a modicum of decorum as though they're not both half-naked in front of each other.

"Oh, yeah," Percy says, with a laugh. "We kept falling off."

"I had bruises for so long. We were both so awkward," she explains, to Annabeth. "We'd never done anything like this before, and it was our first day shooting."

"Why would your director do that?"

"He said it was to build rapport," Percy says. "Sort of worked."

Annabeth glances at him. "It did?"

"Yeah. Broke the ice immediately. Then we could properly act like a couple after that because we'd already done the hard part."

Annabeth thinks about this. She can almost picture it in her head: Piper, who is talkative when she's nervous, and Percy, who she doesn't know, but who has done nothing but be nice to her. They work well together. She's glad Piper has someone like him to do these sorts of scenes with. "That was thoughtful of him."

"We have a theory he's half psychic," Piper says.

"Or immortal," Percy says. "He has these old eyes. I feel like he's lived through a couple of centuries."

"Dude, yes!"

Annabeth lets the conversation fade to nothing more than a background hum, content to just to lie there as Percy and Piper discuss the potential bygone eras their director has lived through. She closes her eyes and leans her head against Piper's shoulder: her eyes are sore and burning, her throat a little thick, and the brightness of the screen against the dark of the room leaves red ghosts on the inside of her eyelids, flickering in static. It's a pleasant enough distraction, but it doesn't stop her mind from spinning, and her mouth goes a little sour just at the memory, of Athena's carefully constructed blank face, Frederick, so afraid of any sort of confrontation, and she feels a fresh wave of tears fill her eyes. She presses them closed harder, prays that none of them fall. She hates crying in front of people but in front of a near-stranger, too? No way.

She doesn't know how long she lies there, drifting, but she is jerked awake when she feels Piper gently nudge her shoulder. "Hey, sorry, Beth," she says, "I just need to move."

Bleary, Annabeth dutifully lifts her head off her shoulder, knuckling at her sore eyes, and watches as she climbs over Percy to get off the bed; the mattress rocks beneath her, and it's almost enough to send her back to sleep. "Where are you going?" she says.

"Percy's about to leave," Piper says. "I'm just checking if Dad is still in the living room. He had a fancy meeting with a director and I don't want to disturb him. Otherwise Percy can just climb out the window."

Annabeth just lets out a quiet, "Oh," and watches silently as Piper slips out of her bedroom door. Now it's just her and Percy left alone on the bed. Normally, she'd be more aware of this: and maybe she is, she can still feel her mind fine-tuning to all the details between them, I am alone with a boy, how he is only a few inches from her, how if she reached over she could fit her finger into the dip in his throat that looks like it would be warm to the touch, but tonight she is too tired to properly do anything about it. She just reaches behind her for her phone in her back pocket that she hasn't looked at since she left. She almost doesn't want to, but she knows she should, so she flicks it on: she has three missed calls from Malcolm, and a text from Athena, Come home now, we need to talk. She switches it off without responding.

"Everything okay?" says a voice, and she glances over to see Percy sat on the end of the bed, slipping his shoes on. He's looking over his shoulder at her, his expression cautiously concerned. "You were looking at your phone like it was going to burst into flames."

"Wish it would," Annabeth says, and throws it behind her. "Just... drama. You know."

"I get that," Percy says, "being an actor, and stuff."

Despite herself, it's dumb enough for her to huff out a laugh. Percy looks pleased. "I'm sure you do."

"I mean, Piper? Such a diva."

"So much so," Annabeth agrees. "Probably has a lot of unreasonable demands."

"She can only work at certain temperatures. Otherwise the shoot must be cancelled."

"Yeah?"

"Such a nightmare," Percy says, with an eye-roll. He's still smiling. She thinks that must be a perpetual state, or something. She likes it: wonders what it must be like. "I mean, you must know, being her friend."

"You think I'm her friend? Common misconception, I'm actually her personal assistant."

Percy throws back his head and laughs, so hard he drops the shoe he was tying the laces of and bends over, hands on his knees. Something in her twists a little at the sight of it: he has a really lovely laugh, and he does it with his entire body. How must it feel, she thinks wryly, to be so generous with happiness like this, where you can let it seep from every orifice and not worry that it will run out.

"Of course," he says, once he's stopped laughing, though not smiling: he hasn't stopped smiling all evening. "I should've known. Silly me."

Annabeth waves her hand. "Easy mistake. Piper has a habit of treating everyone like a personal assistant. Makes my job easy. You'll start experiencing it, too. It starts with a coffee run, and then one day you find you're carrying all her things. Slippery slope."

"Can't wait," he says, and finally laces up his last sneaker. "Is there a PA's anonymous I can join once it starts?"

"I'll send you the address," Annabeth says, "it grows pretty exponentially."

"Looking forward to it."

For a few moments, they both just smile at each other: and despite herself, Annabeth feels her heart start to beat a little faster in her chest. She's honestly not sure how long they would stayed there, but after only a few seconds the door opens and Piper slips back in.

"Still going," she says. "You'd think that they would have run out of things to say but apparently not."

"Am I going out the window, then?" Percy says.

"Think of it as initiation. All my best friends have done it." She steps forward, gives him a quick hug. "Thanks for coming 'round, Perce."

"Always," he says, returning the hug. When they pull away, he meets Annabeth's eyes over her shoulder, and gives her a small smile. "Nice meeting you, Annabeth."

"You, too," she says, risks giving him a smile in return. It's worth it, for the way he grins.

Piper helps him out, lacing her fingers and giving him a boost. Annabeth's eyes only snag a little on the flex of his biceps as he lifts himself up into the sill, and then accidentally meets his gaze when he turns around one final time to give them a wave. His face softens when their eyes meet, and his eyes go glitter-soft as he gives her a small smile, something private and gentle, before he slips through the window and into the night.

"He seems nice," Annabeth says, into the silence. Piper turns to her, eyes bright.

"Yeah?" she says.

"I like him."

Piper smiles at her. "I'm glad. He's one of my best friends on set. Not a half bad kisser, either," she adds, and Annabeth huffs out a small laugh. "I think he likes you, too."

"You think?"

"You could do worse."

They're just teasing each other, but the thought of dating someone is sobering, and Annabeth falls quiet. What is she thinking? She doesn't even know Percy. Entertaining the idea is nice enough, and maybe in one of the alternate Earths out there, in the one where Thalia is ginger, it could become a reality: but not in this one. This universe is not kind enough to do that; or maybe it is not cruel enough. The cruellest thing is to give her hope that she could ever have a boy like Percy, who doesn't hoard happiness like gold, but gives it freely to near strangers like it is inexpensive.

Piper notices her change in mood, because her expression creases a little in concern, and she comes to the bed, dropping down next to her. "Hey," she says quietly, "is everything okay?"

"My parents are getting divorced," Annabeth says. Saying it aloud suddenly makes it so much more real, and she brings her hands up to her face to press the heels of her palms into her eyes, which have grown hot. Piper is stunned silent.

"Oh."

"Can I just," Annabeth says, "stay here, tonight?"

"Of course," Piper says immediately, "of course." Annabeth wishes nothing more than for her to go the bathroom, or something, so she can just cry in privacy, because she doesn't think she can stop the tears from falling now, but she doesn't: instead, she moves closer and wraps her in a tight hug, and Annabeth feels herself break a little, presses her nose into her shoulder and lets out the sob she'd been holding in all night. Piper's arms tighten around her and she runs a hand through her hair and Annabeth is helpless against it, just collapses against her and cries: for herself, for her mom, her dad, her brothers, the shards of her family, the fact that she's such a coward she couldn't even be there for it. She thinks of all the times she had wished for them to legally separate so they could stop dancing along a thin line and hates herself for being so arrogant to think that she didn't care.

She just pushes her head deeper into Piper's neck and closes her eyes.

Athena leaves to New York on the first day back at school.

There was a snowfall the night before, so the driveway is blanketed in white. It is uncharacteristically unmarred: normally the twins would have burst out as soon as they woke up, school be damned, throwing snowballs and trudging their gumboots up and down the way, kicking up troughs and making snow angels, but they have been subdued, recently, and looking out at the sheets of untouched snow make something in Annabeth's chest clench a little.

She knows that there's no one really to blame. But knowing that this whole divorce has sucked out the last remaining life from the house makes her want to throw up.

The entire house has been dimmed, since the announcement. Chase family dinners are always a little off-kilter, always felt like they were only playing at being family instead of actually being one, but now they are bone-dry. Athena said that she'd stay over the new year but Annabeth thinks it would have been kinder to have simply left, because the rest of winter break was spent under a weird, quiet shroud. Annabeth spent New Year's with Piper and Thalia in Thalia's big house, just the three of them getting drunk in and watching New Girl reruns, but it still didn't stop the gnat in her mind. The days between Christmas and New Year's Day are meant to be exciting: this time, it felt like a funeral procession.

Athena's flight is scheduled for mid-morning, an awkward time, so she's going to be leaving while Annabeth and the twins are at school. Just Malcolm and Frederick will be home. They all awkwardly gather around the front door as Annabeth prepares to leave. She is sat on the last stair wrangling her feet into her sneakers, staring determinedly down at her laces so she doesn't have to make eye contact with anyone else. Malcolm is further up the stairs, in pajamas, hair smushed to one side in a cowlick, and Frederick and Athena are crowded uncomfortably by the door, watching her. Annabeth's still a little groggy from the sleeping pills, which she's been needing more than ever – they're running out, she'll need to top them up somehow – so it takes her three tries to tie her shoes. The silence is prolonged. She just wants to disappear.

She stands up, shoulders her bag. She and Athena are almost the same height. Annabeth wonders if she'll look like her when she grows older: can't think if she'd love or loathe it.

For a few, tense moments, they are at a stalemate, waiting to see who will break: and then finally, Athena sighs. "Well," she says. "Come here, then."

Something deep and petty in Annabeth wants to simply push past her, out the door, leave without even so much as a goodbye, so Athena can know how it feels: but she can't, because she knows she will hate herself if she does. Dutifully, she steps into Athena's arms and they hug. They don't hug a lot, she thinks she can count on one hand the number of times they have, so they are a little awkward and unsure, Athena's arms coming around Annabeth's shoulders like she's not sure where else they should go. She smells of perfume, something spiced and flowery and fragrant; Annabeth feels a little numb.

They hold for ten seconds, then step back. Athena straightens her blouse where Annabeth managed to untuck it from the waist of her trousers. "Have a good day at school," she says.

Annabeth simply nods.

"Maybe you can visit me in New York over spring break."

Neither of them would want that. "Yeah, maybe."

Athena nods, too, a little uncomfortably. "Goodbye, Annabeth."

"Bye, Mom. Safe flight."

And then she's gone.

The train ride to school goes by in a rush. She normally sits in a window seat but she doesn't this time, chooses an aisle seat, folds her legs up to her chest, heels snagging on the edge of the seat, so tightly it almost hurts, then buries her nose between her knees and just breathes. When she reaches her stop she unfolds and she can't really feel her fingers or toes, though she's not sure if that's from the cold, the pills, or the position, so she runs her hand hard over the wall as she makes the walk from the station to school to regain some feeling. She doesn't even realise that she's grazed them until she pushes open the door and sees that she is bleeding.

Shoot, she thinks belatedly, her mind still coming online. She thinks she has some band-aids in her locker, so she makes a detour there instead of the cafeteria where she, Thalia and Piper usually meet, pasting on a smile and saying hello to all her classmates she passes as they welcome her back. The science corridor is empty, save for a girl checking the bulletin board, so Annabeth just silently edges past her for her locker, and flings it open so hard that the piece of paper laying innocuously inside flies out like a trapped insect. She catches it just before it hits the ground, and unfolds it.

Welcome back, locker bud!

She blinks at it, and then looks back in her locker, where upon further inspection she uncovers a bag of sour gumdrops tucked away, taped up with a piece of masking tape that has a note scrawled on it in increasingly tinier letters, presumably so it can fit. On it, it reads: Belated Christmas gift! As a thank-you for letting me borrow your locker and also your books. I had to cheat on your books with the prop books because you were gone. Don't tell your textbooks, though it's not like the prop books were worthy contenders, there weren't any doodles in them. Felt pretty empty without the ghost of 167 floating around :^)

It's enough to prompt the first real smile out of her all day.

She fingers the gumdrops. He has no reason to do any of this – he doesn't even know who she is. He had no way of knowing that Christmas break had been bad, just a stretch of unfeeling and excruciating dinners that she couldn't escape from and probably an over-reliance on sleeping pills, and yet here he is, in her locker, with a kind note and bag of candy that'll do something to pierce the numbness. She finds the band-aids, tapes up her grazed hands, and then puts a gumdrop in her mouth with fingers sticky from residue adhesive: it settles on her tongue, tart and sharp and sour, makes her screw up her face. But it's something to feel, other than overwhelming apathy.

She tucks the gumdrops away with a small smile, and then heads off to the cafeteria.

a/n so when i said slow burn i rlly meant slow burn

to the point where percy only physically shows up 20k in oops

anyway hope u enjoyed that! part 2 will be out next saturday, let me know what u thought! :-D