A/N: Every grammatical error is intentional. Enjoy.

. . .

this is the end. hold your breath and count to ten.

~Adele~

. . .

::ONE::

she holds her breath in anticipation for the startling pain in her chest that is sure to come, but she's lying to herself. it'll be far worse than a single pain in her chest.

—Kiss me one last time?

::TWO::

he looks at her and grips her hand tightly. she thinks that he tries to smile but it may just be a grimace, as he is in so much pain as it is. there is blood all over his mouth, dripping into the corners and dripping down, down to down under

—Wise girl, you never even have to ask.

::THREE::

his lips are so, so, so salty with sea and metallic with crimson

but she cannot help but breath him in

his hand graces itself over the swell on her cheek, just barely missing the gash that was once her eye.

::FOUR::

they are, unfortunately, most definitely going to die

::FIVE::

she shivers from the freezing air and strains her poor little gray eyes to see the swarm of monsters in front of her, fangs seething with poison and talons ready to rip open and kill her and kill the man next to her and kill every single other person at camp

::SIX::

in the future, people would tell this tale around campfires, their voices whispers in the wind. little kids would ask their elders

—Why didn't she defend herself?

the big kids would make up answers but they were never correct. how would they be? they weren't in her mind when she decided not to run away, and they were the one holding her hand through everything that happened.

in truth, the maimed and soon to be corpse of a girl had lost her weapon a half an hour before everything happened. the same was true for the man that she loved, but it was odder for him because his weapon always returned into his pocket.

::SEVEN::

by that early time of one fifty five AM, they were both tired of running. there were no weapons. they'd all been destroyed in fires or swallowed by beasts that lusted after their blood.

many of their friends were already dead or slowly dying all around them, but she could've sworn that they were in their own little bubble

a bubble of love death hurt and what was yet to come that neither of them really felt like addressing.

::EIGHT::

in all actuality she hadn't been ready to die. many people would believe that she was suicidal or just clinically insane; that had to be the only logical conclusion as to why she hadn't outsmarted the monsters or sacrificed herself to save the one she loved.

those people have never experienced true love. they did not realize that the two star-crossed lovers couldn't survive without the other.

they had both had a bright future ahead of them. they were going to have three kids and ten grand children, and live in an apartment in Queens with the nicest neighbors imaginable and they would work together at the Empire State Building until they retired at the age of sixty two and both died peacefully in their sleep in their nineties after a full and perfect life.

but they were both tired of running, and they didn't think that their future was going to be all happy like it was actually going to be. no sir they did not believe that for one second.

but the Fates snipped the thread

snip snip

::NINE::

she's taken her ninth breath. she's been counting them

—I'm not ready.

—Neither am I.

that's the end

::TEN::

the time was one fifty six AM. it was November eighteenth of 2008. the sky was a deep midnight blue. the temperature was at an all-time low

and Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase were dead.