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It was ironic, honestly, that he was standing at the door of his new house in New Rome, a quaint neighborhood in New York, New York, after he had decided to sell his house and get the hell out of the simple neighborhood he lived in Rome, Italy, for so many years. Ironic, to say the least, because Percy hadn’t even registered how the place was called before he had set foot back in the United States, his life all packed up in a bunch of luggage and Ms. O’Leary, his loyal companion, by his side.
And he should have registered it, probably, because it would be a responsible thing to do. But in the hurry he found himself in, and the crisis that was the catalyst for the sudden, brutal change of life and routine and choices, Percy didn’t think of much before buying the house and getting on a plane to sign the papers and get his keys.
Now, there he stood — in front of a small, dainty house, with brick walls and a wooden front double door and a large windowsill that gave it all a sweet, home-like air. It was the perfect definition of cozy, the front lawn mowed, and some flower bushes making it look even more graceful than he had first thought it’d be. The place seemed to come from a picture, those beautiful illustrations on books about fairies and magic and hope, and Percy wondered it that would be enough to settle his unsteady heart and calm his troubled mind.
Because the place was beautiful, and yet he couldn’t see or feel the hope of new beginnings that so many people had told him it would bring; he was standing in front of what now was his house, the boxes and furniture already inside for him to organize and distribute as he would like, and Percy could only feel tired. Not from his travels, not from having to put everything to a place — but he was tired, overall, and the weight of his choices and the paths he’d walked seemed to rest over his shoulder.
He was back in New York, and there was nothing really there for him. Not anymore, because he had decided to travel the world so many years before and, at some point, he had stopped keeping in touch with everyone he left behind. His mother, father, stepfather, stepmother, half-siblings and friends — he hadn’t talked to them in years. Long, long years that seemed to now taint his past and shadow his face and cloud his memories of what it was like to be with them, to be there .
And maybe being back should be inspiring. Perhaps being again in north American territory should give him the hopes and the energy to reach out and try to find them as soon as possible; but all he felt was dread. Dread, and dreadful fear that he had lost that part of his life — the one that made him who he was — forever, and because of his terrible choices and the terrible feelings that had settled in his chest so long before.
He was staring at his house, and Percy wondered how long it could take for him to feel at home.
Because it once was home to be in New York, and he had forgotten how it felt. It once was home to never belong anywhere, traveling around and meeting new people and meeting new cultures and faces and languages, until the moment there was nothing but emptiness and the everlasting feeling of missing someone, something, somewhere.
His family, and everything they meant. He feared their anger, despite knowing that was what he deserved, after all. After so long, after so much pain he was sure he had caused them through the years he never even gave a sign of life.
New beginnings should be scary, yes, and ultimately exciting.
Percy was simply terrified.
Ms. O’Leary, on the other hand, seemed thrilled about having new places to discover. Her tail hadn’t stopped moving from the moment they got out of the taxi — who charged him an absurd amount of money upon seeing the dog, but that was quite alright at that point — and Percy had opened the gate that matched the fence circling the property. She had barked and set off to run around, and Percy couldn’t help but chuckle.
At least one of them was excited enough for both.
Percy sighed, taking the key to his front door so he could finally come in and see the mess he’d have to face and make more of soon enough until he could properly relax and rethink every single step of his life. Ms. O’Leary had already made her way to the backyard, somehow, and he could hear her barking at something — probably nothing at all —, chuckling a bit more at his best friend’s happiness on stretching her legs.
He shook his head, rolling his eyes fondly at the mental image of Ms. O’Leary simply running in circles around the area he was yet to see. Then, he looked up again at the doors, and inhaled deeply.
And his dramatic entrance to an empty house as a metaphor for his empty life was rudely interrupted before he could even fit the key in the door.
“So, you’re the lucky one?” someone spoke behind him, and Percy snapped his head in the voice’s direction, turning his body around as well, key still in hand. A man stood behind his fence, a heavy terracotta coat hanging from his shoulders, a suit underneath it and a black Panama hat tucked to his head a bit too much. His face wasn’t sympathetic, and instead he stared at Percy as if he was a bug the man desperately wanted to step on.
Weird. To say the very least.
“Uh— Hello?” Percy greeted, unsure of what to make of the situation. “I beg your pardon; ‘the lucky one’?” he frowned, and the man seemed to snap out of whatever it was that crossed his mind.
“My apologies. Welcome to New Rome,” the man spoke again, now taking a few steps to walk past the open gate and offer his hand in greeting. When he was close enough, Percy, still incredibly confused, shook the man’s hand.
“Percy Jackson,” he offered. “Thank you.”
For the welcome. Not for whatever it was that had happened before.
“Luke Castellan,” the man replied in earnest, his handshake firm before Percy let go of it. “First time in New York?” he asked, and Percy couldn’t quite pin down what it was that seemed so off about the sympathy in his tone.
“In a couple of years, yes,” Percy limited himself to say. Then, his curiosity got the best of him. “What did you say about me being ‘the lucky one’, may I ask?”
Luke’s smile seemed to tighten. Percy decided that it was best to be careful.
“The house,” Luke said. Percy frowned.
“Why? Is it better than the others?” he asked, looking back at the house behind him. When he looked at Luke again, the guy had an eyebrow raised.
“It’s beside Annabeth Chase’s house,” he spoke again, his tone implying that the fact was somehow obvious. Percy was sincerely beginning to think the conversation couldn’t possibly get weirder.
Rookie mistake.
“Who?” Percy could only ask, tilting his head to the side.
Luke frowned, then. Now, he seemed genuinely confused. Percy wanted to say that he had no right to — what, on Earth, was that man talking about?
“Annabeth Chase,” Luke repeated, as if it meant something more than just a random name. “Isn’t that why you chose this house?”
Percy’s face was probably odd to look at, now that he was sure it was completely contorted with his bewilderment. His mouth was slight open and twisted, and he couldn’t narrow his eyes more before completely closing them.
“I chose the house my realtor offered me,” Percy said. “Why, on Earth, would I pick a house based on whether or not this Annabeth Chase was my neighbor?”
“To catch the cat!” Luke explained, and Percy sincerely laughed.
“What cat?” Percy asked, now wondering if he had drunk something that tasted bad or a bit out of the ordinary. He must have been sleeping, having those weird dreams some people claim have meanings but, in the end, were just a bunch of thoughts squeezed together in a juice jar.
“The one with the key,” Luke spoke again, and Percy could really wake up right then. He moved his arms and hands in exasperation, completely lost, and shook his head, eyes wide as he tried to understand what the man could possibly be talking about.
“Do you seriously not know?” Luke asked, and he seemed truly surprised. Percy would need an analgesic for the building headache on his temples.
Percy shook his head in disbelief yet again.
“Man, I just got back from another continent. I do not have the most single idea of who the hell Annabeth Chase is, what a cat and a key mean or how the house I now own has to do with it.”
Luke stared at Percy, who just stared right back as he tried to get his point across. After the better part of a minute, the brunette man seemed to have accepted that the newcomer really didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, and his gaze turned apologetic.
“Okay, then. I’m sorry, man,” Luke spoke, putting his hands in the pockets of his coat. “It’s just an ongoing competition for Annabeth’s cat and their key.”
Percy frowned again.
“Competition?” he asked. Luke nodded.
“It’s a thing we have around here,” he began, and Percy tilted his head. “The house beside yours belongs to Annabeth Chase, the most beautiful woman in the neighborhood. Dare I say, and any other person, the most beautiful woman in New York,” he explained, and something in his tone, again, seemed to put Percy on edge. Luke looked at the house he was talking about, the glint in his eyes with something much more distorted than what someone might mistake for affection. “Every single young man in the neighborhood had offered her their hand in marriage, and desperately wanted to wed her,” he told him, and Percy visibly winced. Luke didn’t notice.
Marrying someone for looks? Asking for their hand in marriage because they look pretty?
The discontentment was clear over Percy’s face. He was definitely going insane.
“She refused one by one, and yet they came back to ask her again. Expensive gifts, poems, songs; they tried to convince her with everything, anything they could buy and hand her,” the man continued, and Percy felt a pang of sympathy for whoever the woman was. What a tragic thing, to be seen as one more object those men could be handed and pay for. “One day, though, Miss Chase grew tired of all men knocking on her door and proposing ridiculous things. So, she made a challenge — whoever caught her cat and the key on the cat’s neck, would not be denied her hand in marriage. Since then, there’s been a whole thing trying to catch the animal: cages, traps, the most unhinged plans seen. No one could ever catch it.”
A wave of satisfaction rolled in his ears, and Percy made his very best not to let it trespass to his expression. He sympathized with the woman, and somehow was intrigued by her presence and the plan she had made — it was odd how she knew that the cat wouldn’t be caught, and yet a high risk to take if she didn’t want any of those men by her side.
Something, Percy thought, that no one could possibly blame her for. One needs to be pathetically vain to try and win someone’s heart as a prize, and not ever think about treasuring it as it should happen. And agreeing to go after a cat instead of just, perhaps, asking this Annabeth out and trying their luck by being normal people? Percy didn’t think that he would like a single soul in the neighborhood.
“They stopped coming to her house,” Luke carried on, taking Percy back from his thoughts and judgements. “And, to this day, everyone tries to catch the yellow cat with a hanging key and earn her love,” he concluded, and looked at Percy again, who was trying his best not to roll his eyes in front of his new neighbor. Those men could be trying to earn anything, but not her love . “We were all curious, then, as for who had taken the house closest to hers.”
Percy blinked, shaking his head.
“I have nothing to do with chasing cats and hanging keys, man, I can tell you that much,” he said. “I just got the house.”
“We all see it,” he said.
“And I would much rather the accusation stopped, Mr. Castellan, for I have no intention to add ‘trapping a cat’ to my routine,” Percy spoke, a little more serious. “I have nothing to do with this odd contest of yours, and I intend to keep it that way,” he explained.
Luke seemed a bit convinced. And a bit too smug for Percy’s liking.
“You’re a first, then,” the man said, and Percy arched an eyebrow. Luke sighed. “My apologies for the accusations, Mr. Jackson. The subject just tends to get on our nerves.”
“I figured,” Percy said. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Castellan; I’ve had a long day.”
The man nodded.
“Of course. Have a good afternoon,” he complied to Percy’s farewell, touching his hat and then turning around to leave the property. Percy watched him go for a few seconds, and then decided that it was too much to process standing at his doorstep.
He was intrigued, to say the least, about the whole scenario he had just been presented to. A woman with whom he couldn’t help but sympathize, being chased and wanted like some sort of prize for someone’s ego and pride. A cat that seemed to outsmart a whole neighborhood — though, after the whole story, Percy couldn’t believe it was that hard to do it —, and a bunch of grown adults who didn’t have anything better to do but to watch every person’s moves and doubt their smallest intentions.
Amazing. And he thought he’d find some peace by being back at his childhood town.
His days went on, and life moved as he did the same with the furniture and all the boxes and luggage he had brought — and not once had he seen the famous Annabeth Chase. Not in passing, not though the windows, and much less at her house. He wasn’t actively looking, but it was still odd that he had seen so many people and met so many neighbors, and yet the most famous figure around was yet to be seen.
Percy could quite understand, if he took the whole story seriously; whoever she was, Annabeth Chase must have been incredibly good at hiding from brainless men and curious eyes. He couldn’t help but wonder if it was real, the story he had been told and the things he had heard around as he walked Ms. O’Leary every morning. She must look like a Greek goddess, perhaps, considering all the commotion. She must not be everything people were saying, in the end, because men weren’t exactly reliable. She must be a myth herself, and it was all a very elaborate prank on the newcomer.
But then, he had met the yellow cat of the story, after a while. He had already been back to New York for a few weeks and was yet to begin on all the plans he had made for when he was so close to his past and his memories again. Percy spent most of his mornings pretending he didn’t need to do anything, and walking Ms. O’Leary and exploring more of that side of the city as if there wasn’t anything more important for him to do with his time, with his life.
He'd spend the afternoons baking, or often taking walks — he’d reminisce about his choices and what he would do in the following day, only not to do anything and postpone things over and over and over again. His mind would be clouded by memories and doubts most of the time, and he would do his very best to completely ignore it.
Which, when he met the cat, was exactly what he was doing. Instead of getting a grip on his life, like he had told himself he would during the whole travel back to North America, Percy was sitting on his couch with Ms. O’Leary, who had simply laid down and sprawled herself as if there was no one else there with her, when something moved in his backyard. Ms. O’Leary was the first one to seem worried, kicking his chest in the process of getting up and sniffing the air, and Percy decided that it was better to follow her along.
After getting his breath back.
The shadow moved in the backyard again, jumping from the top of the fence where it had stood for a few second. Both the man and the dog stopped by the sliding glass doors that led to the backyard of the house and stared at the fast-paced being who had hopped into their property.
A yellow cat. With a key hanging on a chain around their neck. And visibly, clearly panicked about whatever it was that they were running from.
Ms. O’Leary approached the feline carefully, and Percy kept his distance, figuring that a dog that size would already be enough of a scare. The cat spotted the dog, and all its fur was suddenly up, the teeth now bare and hissing at the giant figure. Percy stepped on the garden, voice as low as he could manage as he spoke up, the last thing he wanted being to scare the poor fellow.
“She won’t hurt you,” he said, and the cat’s head snapped in his direction. Grey irises were wide, and the cat’s pupils were but a slit of black, the defensive stance never wavering. Percy whistled a low, quick sound, and Ms. O’Leary stopped walking. The cat didn’t change its position.
Percy shook his head, understanding why it wouldn’t. There wasn’t a male person in that neighborhood that seemed to not be trying to capture the feline with the key — it made sense that the cat would be overprotective of itself at all times. Percy sighed. Terrible, terrible way to live.
“I won’t, either,” he spoke again, now that the cat seemed convinced that the dog wasn’t approaching them anymore. The grey eyes were fixed on Percy, and he had the impression they were analyzing every detail of his figure.
Then, the cat’s head snapped to the other side when a loud ‘thump’ echoed, followed by a low, muttering voice that spilled curses to the air. Percy frowned, turning his head to follow the cat’s focus, and found a stumbling man holding his upper right arm with his left hand.
“But he might,” he said lowly, and the cat stole a glance at him before sprinting to the other side of the garden and trying to hide in the shadows. It didn’t work well, with her fur and the key shimmering in the weak, silver light, and the animal trying to keep the approaching figure in sight. “Ms. O’Leary,” he called, and the dog looked at him. “Watch,” he commanded, and the dog sat down, watching the figure as well.
A few seconds later, the grumbling figure was close enough for Percy to scan the whole picture. A man that couldn’t be much older than he was, with black hair and black eyes, light skin and a not-well-kept suit. His right hand was closed in a fist, and he seemed to apply pressure to a wound on his other arm — a scratch, he noticed. The cat.
It didn’t take long for the man to abandon the pain he was in, looking around like a maniac, trying to find something. He looked into Percy’s backyard, and his brain seemed to register not a single thing but the cat in the distance, ignoring completely the glaring dog and man that stared at him.
Before he did something stupid, like jumping the fence and invading his property, Percy cleared his throat audibly.
“May I help you?” Percy asked, his voice filled with faux sympathy. The man’s head snapped in his direction, his eyes widening as he, for the first time, noticed Percy standing there, in the middle of his garden.
“Oh!” he said, sounding genuinely surprised. Percy kept his smile in place. “Who are you?” he asked, his tone not so friendly.
“The owner of the house,” Percy replied, arching an eyebrow. “Can I help you?”
“Oh,” the man repeated, a bit dumbly. “Moved here long?”
Percy arched an eyebrow.
“A while,” he limited his answer to. “Did you fall?” he asked, just to know the answer. The man babbled a question. “Your arm. Did you fall?”
The man looked at his arm, then back at Percy, and covered the wound with his hand, his smile trying to dismiss the question and the wound itself.
“O—oh! Yes, yes! I was, uh—” he laughed. “Distracted,” his laughter was high-pitched. “Looking for a— uh, a cat,” he continued, his eyes now trailing back to the feline by the back of the garden. Percy’s eyes didn’t leave the man’s face.
“A cat?” Percy asked.
“Yes, yes! A yellow cat, uh, oh!” he said with the worst surprised expression Percy had ever seen in his life. “That happens to be just behind you! Ha, ha! Isn’t it fantastic?!” his voice was louder, and he sounded, and looked, a lot more like a maniac. His right hand was still closed in a fist.
“Oh?” Percy emitted. Then, as if he hadn’t seen the cat before, he turned his head towards it. A second later, he was staring at the man again.
“What a wonderful thing, isn’t it?!” the man tried to sound excited again, and it only danced on the edge of threatening, his eyes so very fiercely trained on the cat. A maniac, for fuck’s sake. What a thing to deal with. “Oh, my good fellow, help me, won’t you?” he asked, his smile trembling. “Fetch her for me so I can give her back to the owned, will you?” the man asked again.
Percy’s eyebrow arched.
“Whose cat is this?” Percy asked in turn, and the man’s right eye seemed about to twitch. Madness , Percy thought. That’s what’s up with this whole cat and key story.
“Oh, it belongs to Miss Chase, just next doors,” he said, laughing more than a bit maniacally, now. “If you fetch her just now, I’ll bring the nasty little creature back to her owner,” he continued, the words more and more being spat through his teeth. Percy closed his eyes for a second, trying to keep his composure.
“Why would I ‘fetch her for you’, as you say, if I could just give back the cat myself?” Percy asked, his voice forever calm and patient. The cat seemed to look at him surprised, then, he saw from his peripheral vision. The man clenched his fist.
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind saving you the trouble,” he spoke again. Percy could swear he could see a vein in the man’s forehead just about to burst, and the effort he was making to seem charismatic, alone, was the freakiest thing Percy had seen ever since moving back. To New York. In a neighborhood where people try to catch a cat for a living, apparently.
“It’s no trouble,” Percy said, the coldness seeping through his smile. The man seemed to swallow dryly and imagining how to sprint into his backyard to catch the animal. Percy was already tired of the conversation. “There will be trouble, though, if you step on my property.”
The man laughed, humorlessly, and shrugged.
“The place has been vacant for years, we’re used to—” he begun, and Percy imagined that the rest of the sentence meant that people were used to set traps and try to catch the cat around the backyards that are empty around the neighborhood. Pathetic , he thought. Pathetic men .
“It isn’t empty anymore, mate, and you’ll be trespassing if you do so as step on the grass I have just mowed this morning,” Percy spoke again, the smile on his face a lot more threatening than what the man expected, suddenly. The snapped his fingers twice, signaling to Ms. O’Leary, who had been quiet and had picked up on her owner’s anger, waiting for him to act on whatever it was bothering him. She got up, tail moving behind her, and teeth bare as she growled.
A menacing sight, Percy knew, because Ms. O’Leary wasn’t a small dog. Even for a Newfoundland, she was a big one, reminding him a lot of a bear whenever she decided she was small enough for a hug. If he didn’t know of her bubbly personality and complete redemption to belly scratches, Percy, too, would be terrified to even be in the same space of such a scary-looking animal.
“I don’t know what is wrong with you, man,” Percy spoke again. “But it is creepy, to say the least, that you are this worked up and crazy about a cat that clearly knows what she’s doing,” he said, and Ms. O’Leary approached the fence slowly. With each of her steps, the man tried to get a bit further; but he hadn’t been smart enough to bolt the fuck away from the house. “Is there something else about this whole chase?”
Playing the idiot had often helped Percy through life — he was sure it’d help him again. The man would hardly share the story with Percy, especially with the cat so close to him, for people like him wouldn’t dare to create competition to their own incompetent selves. And even if Percy wasn’t competition, he didn’t have to know.
“N—no,” the man stuttered, eyes glued to the dog, much closer now. “L—look, man, you sure you can’t—” he began, and Percy was already fed up with his face, his voice, and everything about that damned story about the key. He sighed, and arched an eyebrow, his forced smile now falling completely.
“Out,” he said, his voice low and threatening. Ms. O’Leary took it as a command, jumping over the fence with ease and barking. The man screamed, running away with the dog close behind, and letting something fall from his hands. Percy frowned and started walking to cross the backyards in just a few strides.
The cat was still in the same place, watching as everything unfolded. Her eyes seemed to follow the direction to where the barks still echoed, and Percy took a quick look at her, chuckling.
“She won’t hurt him,” Percy told her, as if the animal could understand what he was saying. He unlocked the small gate of the property, walking to where the man had stood a minute before. “Well, physically. I hope the fear scars him for life,” he laughed, and the cat’s eyes were back on him.
Percy squatted, his smile fading as soon as he recognized what had been dropped. A small bag sealed and transparent, with small, dark grey spheres inside. Rat poison.
“Despicable creature,” he muttered, getting up again and cursing whoever that flaw of a man was, and walking back to his side of the fence. The cat watched his every movement, her ears and tail high in her alarmed state. “Vile, sentient mistake of a person,” he said again, locking the gate and walking towards the house. Ms. O’Leary already knew how to get back inside, and she’d only leave the man be as soon as he was completely out of reach.
Just a few steps from the sliding doors, Percy stopped. He turned towards the cat, who still watched him, and ran his eyes over the small, yellow creature.
“Are you alright?” he asked, still scanning the cat. Her stance was firm and soft, but he noticed, after watching more closely, that she was leaning to only one set of paws — her right side. “He hurt you,” he stated, and the cat hissed.
Percy sighed.
“Kitty cat,” he said. He took it as a victory when she didn’t hiss at him again. “The key is yours. And your mistress’. I don’t care — I don’t want to play this game, alright?” he tried, and the cat didn’t seem convinced in the slightest. He sighed again. “Alright, look. I’ll fetch some antiseptic. For you. But if I so much as dare to touch the chain or the key, you’re more than welcome to do to my face what you did to the madman’s arm,” he offered, gesturing to his face with his free hand. “And the antiseptic will come in handy anyway. Okay?”
The cat was still standing there, on the same spot, and stared at him with sober grey eyes. Percy decided that, if she wanted to — that, considering she understood his words —, then she would follow him at some point. Right then, he just wanted to get rid of the poison and wash his hands, and so he walked back into the house, leaving the sliding glass door open.
Walking into the kitchen, he took a paper bag and a plastic one, wrapping the small bag with the poison in both. Then, he reached for one plastic bottle he had somewhere, putting the bags inside and closing the bottle tightly. He sighed and added to the next day’s duties to look for a proper place to discard that terrible thing.
Percy washed his hands, smiling when he could recognize the sounds of his dog coming back home — she wasn’t the most subtle, even less when she was breathless and had probably run the better part of a mile —, and laughed quietly to himself. He was glad he had dealt with the insane man and probably scared him for life, but the thought of more people like that being some sort of weekly, even monthly occurrence was a bit disturbing.
No one told him he’d have to deal with that when he signed the contract on the house.
After washing his hands, he decided that changing his clothes would be a good idea, somehow. Not even his fingers had touched the poison, but he couldn’t help but be bothered about the contact with it anyway — and the more he thought, the more he had the impression and feeling of dirtiness over his clothes and on his skin. Irrational, yes; but it wouldn’t do harm to change what he was wearing.
Before walking up the stairs, Percy thought again about the cat standing on his backyard. She hadn’t followed him inside, but hadn’t left the garden either, if Ms. O’Leary’s absence in the living room meant something at all. There wasn’t any cat food in his house — for obvious reasons — and he wasn’t sure if he should give her anything, anyway.
The cat seemed smart, though, and he figured that there wasn’t any harm in putting something out for her to eat, and some water if she wanted to drink. The house beside his had all the lights turned off, and Percy supposed that the owned wasn’t home at the time — so, offering something to her cat wouldn’t be a rude thing to do, in the end.
He reached for two glass bowls in his cabinets, one of which he had filled with water and placed it close to the open door, not too close so Ms. O’Leary wouldn’t tumble everything on the floor once she got inside. As for the other, Percy didn’t know what to put — would the cat eat the dog food Ms. O’Leary ate? Or, perhaps, the pieces were even too big, too hard for her to chew and swallow.
He searched around the kitchen, not having anything that could remotely sound like a good idea for a cat. He could risk some of his food, but that would also mean risking the feline’s health, and that would be counterproductive, considering the whole drama to have unfolded over ten minutes before.
Percy gave up and hoped that Miss Chase was as good of an owner as people said she was good-looking. He looked towards the open door one more time, before turning around and taking one of the blue cookies that rested inside of a jar over the counter, walking up the staircase to his bedroom two steps at a time.
The house was a lot less cluttered now than it had been in those first weeks he had moved in, confused and anxious and completely lost in whatever it was that he was doing of and with his life. The boxes were now folded and organized in the attic, and he had managed to hang each one of his countless paintings on the walls, place the trinkets and memories all around the house and rooms, and make everything look as much as home as he could.
It was better than his place at home had been, that much was obvious. Back then, his life was working and studying and trying to achieve things he didn’t even know how became a goal at all, and his house reflected much of the mess roaming around his brain and heart and future. The walls were messy, and the paintings overleapt themselves, and his shelves were crowded enough that Percy wouldn’t even try to reach for anything, fearing for it all to come down to the floor and make everything even worse than it already was.
Packing his whole life up had been a challenge, and one that took him longer than needed to overcome. Half of his heart wanted to leave each thing, each piece of his life and mistakes behind and start anew once he had gotten to his childhood city — the other, more rational and controlled, had decided that he had worked too hard, spent too long in gathering everything and, therefore, shouldn’t just be discarded as if it didn’t even matter at all.
Distributing everything around the new place had been something to occupy his mind with, a blessing in disguise. Percy wasn’t the most methodical of people, had never been, but planning the perfect spots and rearranging each trinket so there was a story being told while he walked through the house and remembered every shore, every mountaintop, every valley his feet had met at least once. It was an attempt, everything about this ‘new beginning’ not to let what once was the happiest of his life turn into bitterness and regret.
His bedroom, though, was the only room in the house with clean walls and surfaces. There wasn’t much other than his bed, with navy-blue sheets and duvet, a working desk, a chest of drawers and two bedside tables, each with a lamp and a clock over the one on the side he slept on.
The walls were colored light-grey, and the wardrobe took most part of one of the walls. Other than that, there wasn’t much — no paintings, no mirrors, nothing but the color and the window that led to a balcony, covered with light-colored curtains. Percy liked it, the simplicity of it all. Whenever life and memories got too overbearing, overwhelming, and hurt too much, he could just hide away in his bedroom, stare at the ceiling and breathe deep, trying to empty his mind.
Right then, Percy only sighed, fighting the sudden desire to just bury himself in his mattress and sleep away the fatigue that washed over him as soon as he saw his bed. He still needed to lock the house, Percy reminded himself, and check on Ms. O’Leary. Not to mention, he grumbled, that he had promised something to an unknown cat that belonged to an unknown neighbor, as well.
And Percy wasn’t one to break promises, regardless of whom he had promised something for.
So, as soon as he had changed his clothes — to a pair of pajama pants with shark drawings and a loose, incredibly old shirt he had bought somewhere in Central America — he walked to his bathroom to reach for an antiseptic and a clean cloth. He sighed and headed back to the living room, quietly descending the stairs with bare feet and watchful eyes.
The cat was over his counter, her grey eyes apparently mapping the ambient around her — the shelves and couches and walls and trinkets. Her tail moved lazily behind her, and she seemed to be at ease in the house, especially with Ms. O’Leary lying by the couch and breathing soundly.
Percy’s face morphed into a soft smile, happy, for some reason, that the cat could feel somewhat safe in his house, and close to his dog. His approach to the feline was slow and silent, careful not to startle her or Ms. O’Leary, who seemed to be gladly napping before her last meal of the day.
“Hey,” he said, soft and low, and heard as it echoed around the room. The cat snapped her head to look at him, and her tail stopped moving, her eyes now narrowed as she waited for his steps to come closer. At least, she hadn’t bolted out of the house. “The water is for you, if you want some,” Percy gestured to the bowl on the floor. The cat didn’t move. “Alright.”
As he got closer and closer to the counter, the cat didn’t move, but watched him all the same. Percy raised his hands with the cloth and the small bottle, showing her what it was that he was holding, just as a precaution. Soon, he stopped right in front of her, looking down at the feline with an arched eyebrow and a smile.
The situation was funny, to say the very least. A grown adult being so careful and wanting so badly to befriend an unknown cat, just because it seemed like a nice thing to do.
It was definitely something to do, in the end. He could deal with it.
“So,” he spoke. “Do you want me to clean that wound?” Percy asked, gesturing to the cat with his chin, indicating the cut on her back leg. The cat only kept staring at him for a minute, and Percy waited without moving a muscle until she meowed lowly, stretching herself over the counter, lying on her side.
Percy let out a laugh that mostly came from his nose and shook his head softly. For some reason, having that cat trust him to come close, to touch her, even, made him feel incredibly happy — he was glad that she believed his words about how he didn’t want to have anything to do with the chaos that involved the keys and the cats and the neighbors around them.
“Okay,” he said softly, moving to the side a bit more, the further he could get from her head, her neck, and the shinning golden key hanging from it. He could feel her eyes on him regardless, and placed the cloth and the bottle over the counter before, very slowly, touching her leg softly to analyze the cut.
He wondered what had caused it, after all. His best guess, though it made him dread the whole thing more, was that the vile man had set a trap with barbed wire, and she managed to escape just in time. There were a few more scrapes on her leg that supported his theory, but the bigger cut was the thing to worry about.
“Okay,” he muttered to himself, and walked away towards the sink, taking the glass bowl he had taken out for some food before and filling it with some water. It wasn’t cold, but he supposed she wouldn’t wait for him to heat anything, so it would have to do. He approached the animal again, chuckling at how she never let him out of her sight, and spoke. “I’m not sure if you’ll like it, kitty cat,” he told her, placing the bowl down. “But I can assure you it’ll help.”
She meowed softly, and Percy dipped the cloth in the water, just a bit, and as slowly as he managed to, put it a few centimeters from the cat.
“Remember: if I try to catch the key, you’re welcome to scratch my face. The deal covers no other circumstances,” he told her, tilting his head to the side a bit and widening his eyes as if she could understand what he meant. The cat meowed again, and made a movement with her eyes that resembled a little too much someone rolling their eyes. Percy snorted, and carefully touched the cloth to the feline’s leg.
She didn’t hiss or move, and Percy took extra care to never put too much pressure and be as quick as he could manage. The main cut was a bit deeper than the others, but nothing extreme that he had to worry about; his movements were quick and lightweight, and the most stubborn parts were the inches of her golden fur where the blood had mostly dried out already.
All the while he worked, the cat seemed to wait patiently for him to be done, not once complaining or making it seem that he had somehow made the bother or the pain worse. Percy talked to her about whatever shallow thought that crossed his mind, voice soft and sweet as if trying to take her mind out of what he was doing, and her grey eyes never left his face, forever cautious, always watchful and more than ready to make a move in case he would break their deal.
“Alright, it’s clean enough,” he announced after a few minutes. “Now, for the antiseptic. Ms. O’Leary doesn’t really bother or even feel it when I apply it over her wounds, sometimes, so I can only suppose it won’t sting that much. But that dog is an odd one, so I can’t really tell,” Percy laughed, putting the bowl and the cloth away, smiling softly at the mention of his dog.
Then, he reached for the medicine — coincidently a bit too close to kitty cat’s upper part, and her paw moved in impressive velocity to sink her nails to the long-sleeve of his shirt. Percy stopped moving, his hands a few inches away from the bottle he needed, and turned his face to the cat. Her wide grey eyes were glaring at him, and he arched his eyebrows.
“The bottle is right there, kitty cat,” he said, using his other arm to gesture to what he wanted. “The whole point of the arrangement here it’s to get to it, lovely.”
She didn’t move, and Percy figured she wouldn’t until he got his hands away from so close to the golden chain she wore. So, with her nails still dug in his shirt — he didn’t even like that shirt much, anyway — he kept moving his arms to reach for the bottle. Once it was in his hand and he began to retreat, she began lowering her paw.
“Alright,” he said. “It might sting. I’m not sure. But it’ll help,” Percy assured her again, and the cat merely waited for him to do whatever he wanted to. He uncapped the bottle and, as slowly as he managed to, used the plastic pencil of sorts to apply it over the scratches. As a reflex, perhaps, she tried to move her leg away, and Percy waited.
A few more seconds went by, probably for the cat to assess the situation and wonder if the bother was something she was willing to deal with. Then, she stretched her leg again, and Percy smiled as he continued to put the medicine on.
“Okay,” he said. “I would make a bandage, but I don’t know where I put anything first-aid related other than this,” he lifted the bottle close to his face, then placed it down on the counter again. “So, this is all I can do for you. There isn’t any other wound, is there?” he asked, and the cat seemed distracted while watching her leg. “Do not go licking it, please,” he said, then, despite knowing it’d be useless.
The cat could be extremely smart, yes; but it was still a cat.
She looked up at him after giving up analyzing her injury, and Percy smiled at her again. The cat seemed a bit confused, bewildered — her eyes were slightly narrowed, but she didn’t seem to be as tense as she had been all the while before. For some reason, it warmed up his heart to know that.
“Tell your owner about it, okay?” he asked. “The wound, I mean. You wouldn’t be able to tell the whole creepy-guy-situation, of course, but you can show her the cut,” he rambled on, and the cat meowed. “I’ll push my luck and take that as a ‘yes’,” he laughed, and the cat slowly got up.
She stretched her wounded leg again, and tested it against the floor. She still couldn’t put all the weight over it, but it seemed to feel better than before, Percy thought happily. The cat looked at him, and then seemed to think twice before taking a step forward; he couldn’t blame her. He wouldn’t. There had been a lot of emotions only in those last forty minutes, and it was best she didn’t risk having to run away from another madman again.
“You can go, lovely,” he told her. “You should go back home before some other maniac decides it’s a good night to catch you.”
The cat meowed softly, and then decided to bow her head slightly to Percy, what he figured was some kind of thanks. Percy laughed, and bowed back a lot more dramatically than ever needed.
Then, the cat sprinted, and not towards the sliding doors. Percy watched, surprised, as she bolted to the kitchen and happened to stop right in front of the bowl where he kept some blue chocolate-chip cookies — the one he didn’t noticed he hadn’t put the lid back over earlier — and didn’t hesitate one second before leaning her head inside the jar and taking one cookie in her mouth.
She looked at Percy, who was sincerely shocked, and then bolted out of the kitchen window. Percy stood there, trying to process the scene and all that entailed it, and then laughed.
“Wise cat,” he said to the empty living room, shaking his head.
Deep down, he had a really, really good feeling about their meeting.
A few more months went by before he properly met Annabeth Chase, the woman who seemed to outsmart every single man in the neighborhood and was more a legend than his neighbor, at that point. Kitty cat had become a reliable companion, often visiting, and finding shelter in his home, as well as in his company and Ms. O’Leary’s.
And it was a funny thing, really, that he saw kitty cat more and more often, despite spending most of the day out after finding a job downtown Manhattan, as a teacher in an Elementary School. His days were now filled with noise and squealing kids, and that was something, he found out, that Percy wouldn’t mind getting used to for the long haul.
When he had first come back, Percy didn’t even know what it was he could do with his life. Traveling, when he stayed longer at some place, he had done all sorts of jobs and occupations — and after graduating and getting a diploma, teaching seemed like the proper thing to do, but there was never time, there was never space. So, he’d take part-time jobs in clinics, offices, or language schools, never settling for anything, never staying for too long.
Coming back to New York, though, had changed how he saw his routine. There was no reason to search for part-time jobs anymore, like he had thought about doing when he took his time to write his resumé, for he was staying. He was staying, for the first time in forever; he had no plans of going away, regardless of the outcome of the encounters he had been postponing out of fear and cowardice.
Percy was beyond himself when he had been invited for more than one interview, and even happier when he had received more than one offer to choose from. Considering his experience and the fact that he had applied for a post-graduation program, the salaries he was offered were pretty good, too, which was, undoubtedly, a bonus.
His first day was spent with his soul drowning in an anxiety and unquietness he hadn’t felt in a really long time before starting a job, but it couldn’t have possibly gone better. The kids were incredible, and there was nothing he would possibly change — except, perhaps, for the amount of mothers and teachers that spent their mornings asking if he was single, if he was available, if he liked drinking. That was something he’d gladly never go through again.
Day by day, Percy got more and more comfortable with the routine he had been stablishing — waking up, walking Ms. O’Leary, taking a shower, and getting dressed for work. Then, meeting the kids, who had liked him a lot, it seemed, and doing his very best so they wouldn’t have the same hardships at school that he had gone through when he was little, forever changing schools and being the last one in class.
He tried his best to make the classroom a safe place for all of them and, a couple of months in, it seemed to be working just fine. The History classes, the ones he taught, were the most expected ones by the kids, according to the other teachers and staff at the school. Apparently, they’d talk about Mr. Jackson and the lessons and the subject regardless of which teacher was in class, and while some were amused and took it all in good fun, some others would look Percy up and down, and ignore his presence completely.
He couldn’t care less. Going to work had never been a joy before, and it’s all it had been from the moment he signed the contract with the principal and gave his documents to Human Resources. And anytime he came home, his bones were tired, and his body was drained, but there was a smile on his face despite the throbbing headaches a dozen of screaming children would bring any living soul.
It was one of those days, coming bac from the school exhausted and smiling, when he first got a glimpse of the woman that lived next doors. Up until that point, he had considered that she wasn’t more than a collective delirium the whole neighborhood shared — the lights on her house would turn on and off throughout the day, yes, but Percy had never even seen her shadow inside. The window upstairs would eventually be open close to sunset, and be closed when Percy woke up, but for all he knew it could be a forty-year-old man that lived there.
He had considered the woman to be a tale, and the cat to be just a really good arrangement for an urban legend that people liked to keep alive around those blocks. Some weird game that only they knew, to give some sense of belonging for those who lived there, for those unwarned who would buy houses after deciding to get some resemblance of an old life back and try to make amends with ghosts of their pasts.
For long weeks, it did make more sense than believing all the nonsense. Even after meeting the cat. And scaring off a disturbing amount of disturbed men that had tried to trespass to take the cat and the key.
Then, one day, he saw her.
Well, quite sincerely, all Percy saw was her back as she walked back to her house, and he struggled greatly with finding his key to open the front door. She had beautiful braids up in a large bun, and her frame was wrapped tightly in a burnt-orange trench coat, her gloved hands holding tightly to a leather case in front of her body.
For some reason, Percy found himself staring, and incredibly intrigued by the woman. For one, she was real. For seconds, there was something in the grace and finesse with which she held herself up that just scratched one side of his brain, demanding to know more about the walking mystery that just passed him by. Her movements were graceful as her low heels hit the sidewalk, and her posture was just enough to make one be aware of their own.
It was menacing, as well, to some extent. And Percy had proved enough to himself that he wasn’t the bravest of men — so, in a hurry and a flare of panic, he managed to find the right key and turn it in the keyhole, pushing the door open and rushing inside. Quite pathetic, indeed, but he didn’t want to risk her going inside her house and seeing his curious eyes prying her life and appearance.
There was something about keeping the mystery, too, that Percy wasn’t proud of admitting. There was some sort of thrill in wondering if she was an actual person, if she really lived there, and how could she look like. A living legend of some kind, and something to daydream about — a bit creepy, he wasn’t afraid to admit, but still. He would take anything to distract his mind from his own life, his own problems.
That night, kitty cat had appeared as he was cooking dinner. It had become somewhat of a habit that the three of them — Percy, Ms. O’Leary and kitty cat — would spend most nights together, Percy talking to them as if they could understand every single one of his words and talked back at him, building a friendship that, perhaps, was one-sided. He didn’t mind, though, and he appreciated a lot when they would all go to his backyard, each with his bowl of food, and enjoy the peacefulness of the moonlit nights.
If he had spared more glances than usual towards the second-floor window of the house beside his, than it was no one’s business to worry about or pry on.
Ever since that sunset, Percy’s mind had been clouded with the faceless figure that seemed to haunt the neighborhood as well as his own thoughts. He couldn’t help it, after all, to picture how the woman was — if her face was everything everyone around him said it was. An even more curious side of him couldn’t help but wonder what color were her eyes, how loud was her laughter, if her face lit up whenever she smiled; did she smile a lot? Was her voice as enchanting as people claimed her looks to be?
All he could do was to imagine, though, for a few more weeks after they had brushed past. Kitty cat would appear even more often, whenever he was back from work, and Percy couldn’t help but wonder how there wasn’t even a shadow of the mistress in the curtains, through the windows, going inside our leaving the house.
Meeting her was a surprise — one that Percy wished he could relive a thousand times, just to feel the same things and think the same thoughts for the first time again.
Out of everything Percy could have pictured and expected — like a celebrity-like face, a magazine-model smile —, nothing in the world could have prepared him to see the most breathtakingly beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. He had been looking for Ms. O’Leary, who didn’t come or answer when he came back home and called her name, and was attracted to loud laughter and barking that seemed to come from his backyard.
Stepping outside, though, Percy noticed that it came from a bit further, the happy sounds that echoed around. He frowned, slightly worried because Ms. O’Leary wasn’t one to just run away from the house or even wonder far whenever they were out together. Then, when the familiar bark sounded again, he snapped his head towards the house beside his — the mysterious woman’s house. From where a woman’s laughter came.
His heart seemed to scream inside his chest.
Percy walked slowly, his heart thumping and blood rushing inside his ears. It was slightly ridiculous — truly, it really was — how nervous he was about seeing someone. Besides, it could be someone else; maybe a friend of hers, or any other possibility he couldn’t quite come up with in the short way to the gate.
Percy took a deep breath, a small smile brightening his expression when another burst of laughter sounded. And as he crossed the gate that separated their houses, he could never have expected to find the woman scratching the dog’s belly as Ms. O’Leary seemed to have the time of her life. She rolled around in the grass, her tongue sticking out of her mouth, and looked nothing like the dog who had put the odd man to run a few nights before. The woman — Percy sincerely couldn’t possibly place such beauty in the rational side of his brain. There was no way to be logical about that — was smiling, laughing, and it was possibly the prettiest scene he’d ever seen in his life.
Because suddenly there was a goddess — such a beauty couldn’t possibly be human; not a soul in the world or out of it would convince him of such — laughing loudly as his ginormous dog barked and drooled and rolled around the grass. And Ms. O’Leary wasn’t the type of dog to befriend humans that easily, much less ones none of them knew.
But the woman — his neighbor — was everything his eyes could try to make sense of.
Her ebony black skin, wide brown eyes and cascading black braids caused his throat to close and his oxygen to be punched out of his lungs. Her laughter was loud and clean, and the orange shirt she wore, along with a pair of jeans, made her skin, her face, her smile glow even more. The thick eyebrows were scrunched along with her eyes, so wide was her smile, and Percy was only human.
He could die and be so happy about it, then, because there was proof that angels and heaven existed.
The braids weren’t pinned up in a bun, this time, and fell down her back and over her shoulders as she was knelt on the grass, seemingly unbothered about how her knees would be stained and her clothes would most likely forever be pestered with long fur. Her jaw was angled and her traces were all delicate, and Percy wasn’t proud to admit that he could perfectly understand the men who fell in love with her at first sight.
That, right there, was the prettiest person he had ever seen. And he had traveled the world for years and years.
“Ms. O’Leary,” Percy called, doing his best to get out of the trance, suddenly. It wouldn’t be good to stop functioning while staring crazily at someone. Both the dog and the woman snapped their heads in his direction, and his neighbor watched as the dog scrambled back to her paws, darting in the man’s direction for only a second, licking the air around him, and jumping without touching, before making her way back to the woman’s side. “Come on, girl. How did you even—”
“She jumped over the fence,” the woman supplied, and Percy did his best not to think about how even her voice seemed to be ethereal. If she wasn’t a goddess, then she was a siren. A nymph. An absolute walking dream. “Quite a determined one, I would say.”
He suddenly couldn’t breathe. She was talking to him, and Percy was drawn to believe that Cupid was a thing and there was an arrow crossing his chest.
“She is, indeed,” Percy agreed, smiling weakly, thanking whatever deities existed that his tone was leveled, and his voice came out normally. “My most sincere apologies. I don’t know what could have gotten into her—” he tried, looking at Ms. O’Leary with stooping eyes. The dog shrunk a bit, but still wiggled her tail, hitting the woman in the back while doing so. “I mean… You see, she befriended your cat—”
“Oh?” the woman interrupted him, arching an eyebrow. Her every expression seemed to enchant him. Percy really needed to get a grip of his life. “Did she, now?”
He nodded, sheepish.
“She is very sociable, and doesn’t care whether her friends are dogs, cats, snakes or platypuses,” Percy supplied, a bit embarrassed under her gaze, and scratched the back of his neck in his nervousness. His smile was still weak, and his heart was still causing havoc to his brain.
“Platypuses?” the woman — Annabeth , his mind offered. She has a name — sounded amused. “Is there a story, there?”
Percy chuckled, a bit more at ease. Her tone wasn’t accusing, and she seemed genuinely curious.
“There is,” he nodded. “So, you see, there’s very little I could possibly do to stop her from becoming friends with living things. And your cat seems to be a really good friend to her.”
He looked at Ms. O’Leary and, as if understanding what he said, she barked happily. An agreement of sorts, that did come in handy. Annabeth smiled down at the dog by her side, her hand finding the animal’s neck and scratching it softly, much to the dog’s pleasure.
“Have you met her?” Annabeth asked, still looking at Ms. O’Leary. “My cat?”
“Oh,” he babbled, a bit surprised at the question, quite scared of where that conversation path could lead to. “I have, yes. A lovely one, I’d say,” he confessed, smiling at the mention of is little friend.
“Most people wouldn’t think so,” Annabeth said. It sounded a bit like a challenge.
“Most people around here wouldn’t think , it seems,” he said, a little bit harsher than intended. Percy silently hoped Annabeth would’ve understood that it wasn’t, by any means, towards her, the harshness of his tone. “That was rather rude. My apologies, Miss Chase.”
She arched an eyebrow again. Every single one of her movements should be caught in camera, in painting, carved on walls. Her words should be written, and her thoughts should probably be studied.
“You know my name,” she stated, and Percy fought the redness of his cheeks by turning his face down a bit.
“Everyone knows it around the neighborhood, it seems,” he said, his voice lower and slightly bothered at the thought as to why they all knew. Ridiculous , it still rang in his head.
“You also know the story, then,” she said, her voice a little humbler, as well, as she crossed her arms over her chest and looked away from him. A protective stance of sorts; one that he wished she wouldn’t wear. Not around him, at least.
He must’ve taken too much caffeine for his thoughts and heart to be racing that much.
“I did not go about asking, you see,” Percy felt the need to explain. “I had just gotten here for the first time when a man approached me, throwing around accusations over why I had moved to the house right beside yours. Which, quite sincerely, it’s sinister on itself,” he added, and Annabeth’s eyes turned back to look at him.
The warmth of her brown irises melted something in his soul. He hoped he wouldn’t need it for the foreseeable future, whatever it was. He desperately wished that hadn’t been his best judgements.
“And what else is sinister, I wonder?” she asked.
Percy blinked.
“The key on the cat,” he answered without a thought, and not missing a beat. Her eyebrows raised, and he realized what he had said a little later than he should have. “I mean, it is a bit… Eerie? I— people are running around and making attempts to— Some even went as far as placing things on my backyard,” he confessed.
Her eyebrows arched higher, and he saw the suspicion glinting in her eyes. Sure. It made sense she’d get to such conclusion — that he had placed the traps and tried to catch the feline himself. He couldn’t have that. No; that was completely unacceptable. He had gone that far and conquered kitty cat’s trust, and having her mistress’ suspicions would be incredibly offensive, for some reason.
Moving his hands and shaking his head fiercely as his eyes widened, Percy tried his best to convey all his honesty in his words.
“I have no intention of harming your cat, you must know. She is quite lovely, and I rather appreciate her company,” Percy explained, wanting her, more than anything, to believe his words. The cat was lovely company. A dear friend, it turned out. “And I do like to believe she appreciates mine, as well, as she keeps returning.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed.
He felt like being watched by an eagle. An owl, perhaps — too smart for anyone else to catch up with her plans and thoughts and strategies. Her voice was but a riddle when she spoke again. Her stance was the one of a hunter, a warrior — menacing and strategic, completely out of his comprehension.
“How come you have never tried to snatch the key from around her neck, if she trusts you so?” the woman asked, her eyes studying each movement, each one of his breaths. Percy couldn’t find it in him to feel uncomfortable under her gaze. But his heart bruising his ribs was, undoubtedly, something uncomfortable happening right then.
Percy scoffed, a bit amused. She waited for his answer.
“My firsthand apologies should my answer be too straightforward, Miss Chase; it is simply that I cannot find myself to be thrilled over this entire— Ordeal , let’s say. I do not believe that a woman’s heart is supposed to be treated as a prize, as something to conquer; but as something prized, something to be wooed. And, quite honestly, I can’t even wrap my head around the idea of so many men wanting someone for only their egos’ sake,” he shook his head. “Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I do not see how romance and love is treated so poorly now-a-days.”
Annabeth stared at him with curiosity. With a little more effort — and a hint of wishful thinking — he could swear that there was delight glistening in those brown irises, as well.
“Not to mention,” he continued, just to make a point. “Those morons make traps and games and don’t even think about whether the cat will be harmed. I am most glad she finds some solace in my home, some safety that comes either from me or Ms. O’Leary,”
At the mention of her name, the dog changed sides, trotting quickly to Percy’s side and licking his leg over his pants. The sides of Annabeth’s mouth quirked upwards. Her shoulders shook softly with stifled laughter, the amusement now dancing in her face, clear as day.
“Ms. O’Leary,” she repeated. The dog’s ears went up, and she wiggled her tail — and her whole body, as a consequence. Percy firmed his feet on the ground. “Odd name for a dog.”
Percy tapped the dog’s head, smiling sweetly.
“Too odd a dog for a common name,” he looked down at his friend, and the dog barked softly. Percy smiled. “What’s her name?” he turned back to Annabeth, trying hard not to think too much about how she seemed to get even prettier whenever his eyes darted back. The woman’s eyebrows arched, a question. “Your cat. What’s her name?”
“Didn’t she tell you?” his neighbor asked, a playful smile on her face.
“I’m afraid not,” he shrugged softly, his tone falsely mournful. “Figured she must’ve wanted to keep the mystery. Ms. O’Leary won’t tell me, either,” Percy added.
Annabeth chuckled. Percy wanted to bottle the sound. To hold it with both his hands and see if his heart could beat forever to that rhythm.
“What have you been calling her, then, whenever she visits?” she asked.
Percy thought he might have blushed. He couldn’t be sure.
“Kitty cat,” he offered, and Annabeth’s head tilted to the side. “Sounded fitting. But what is her name?”
“Now, if she didn’t tell you, why would I?” Annabeth asked, her eyes and tone teasing. Percy didn’t like the clinically dangerous movements of his stomach inside his body.
“Oh, come on,” he groaned, not one bit bothered. “Charlie?” he asked, and Annabeth arched an eyebrow. “Lily? Luna?” she pressed her lips together. “Oli? Julie?” she snorted. Percy wanted to hear it more. “Oh, please. I don’t know, Fluffy?”
“You think it would be that ordinary?” she asked.
Percy arched an eyebrow at her defiance.
“Hm,” he chanted. Then, he smiled. “Olga,” he said, aiming for it not to sound like a question.
Annabeth’s face lit up in glee.
“Hm,” she hummed, as well. “It could be.”
Percy scoffed.
“Of course, it could be. Anything could be. That’s the— point, but—” he moved his hands around, moving his head as well as he rolled his eyes. “Is it?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she asked, her tone as playful as she could manage.
“That’s the whole point of this conversation!” he exclaimed, not one bit upset, and yet making his best to give the impression. He could tell she wasn’t being fooled, which made it all the more comfortable to carry it on.
“Is it?”
“Of course, it is!” he said again. He sighed, laughing. “Will you not tell me her name?”
Annabeth seemed to think about it for a moment. He knew she wasn’t telling him a single thing about the cat.
“Kitty cat,” she said, thoughtful. “I like it,” she smiled. “I’m sure she does, as well.”
Percy could die through and in her smile. He wished he would. It’d be a kind, unpainful death, he had never been surer of anything in his life.
“Oh,” Percy breathed. Unsure if because of her tone or how her smile made her face look ever softer, even prettier. “This has been going on, so far, without a complaint. At least,” he shrugged again. “I haven’t heard her complain, no.”
He smiled, and she stared at him for a second before returning it, bright and sincere.
“Then that would be her name to you,” she said, and Percy frowned. “Believe me, Mr. Jackson — had her not liked it, you would have known,” Annabeth explained, and Percy couldn’t help but agree.
It escaped his perception that he had never once had told her about his name in the conversation. He was too dazzled in her smile, perhaps, or in the tone of her voice that seemed to echo around his skull.
“Strong minded, is she not?” he asked, laughing. Annabeth nodded, smiling along. “A wise cat.”
His neighbor’s eyes seemed to glimmer a his choice of words. He was more than delighted about such a detail.
“Quite,” she said. “And she doesn’t like many people. It is good to see that her company is appreciated.”
“Quite,” he repeated, and she arched an eyebrow again. “She’s lovely. A loyal friend, a dear creature. And rather intelligent, as well; she always seems to know where she wanders to.”
“She does,” Annabeth assured him. “She has been running around for years, now. There aren’t many tricks that could possibly swindle her,” she added, and before he had registered her tone, the comment made him visibly happier; having confirmation of his perceptions about the cat’s astuteness was somehow comforting. Looking at Annabeth, the smile on her face gave him another impression, however — for some reason, it sounded a lot like another challenge she threw over the tabletop. Percy wondered what was up with her challenges and riddles and secrets.
He fought back the intrigue creeping up inside his veins, deciding it wasn’t something for him to pry on. There was more to that woman than just fifteen minutes of conversation, and there was surely more to her than the curiosity that flooded his mind and the tip of his tongue.
“Thank the heavens for that,” Percy breathed, instead, hoping she believed his relief to be as real as he felt. “Those people are fucking unhinged. It terrifies me to know how far they’d go for what they consider to be a prize.”
Annabeth tilted her head.
“And isn’t it a prize?” she asked. Percy frowned. He shook his head.
“It’s madness,” he said. “There are a lot of layers, and none of them rings right in my head.”
Annabeth scoffed, finding something about his answer seemingly hilarious. Percy smiled at her, more than just a bit enchanted about everything he had just found out on the mysterious person that seemed to single handedly make more than a dozen of men lose their minds, and something told him that he wasn’t to remain immune to the craziness himself.
For some reason, and with some fear, he didn’t find it in his heart to be bothered so much. Percy was pretty confident nothing in the world could possibly make him trick or even consider hurting a friend, whether or not they were human, and he did find enjoyment in seeing so many brainless people failing in capturing kitty cat right in front of his eyes.
Definitely a bonus that came with the location of his house.
“Alright,” she said. “And how many layers of madness would ring right in your head?” Annabeth asked, a side-smile gracing her lips. Percy barked out some laughter, and then pretended to be lost in thought for a couple of seconds.
“I mean,” he shrugged. “I have been to some pretty insane places. Perhaps…” he smiled. “About nine.”
She hummed.
“Nine layers of madness?” she asked. “Like nine circles of hell?” Annabeth guessed, and Percy nodded happily. She chuckled. “A fan of Dante, Mr. Jackson?”
“I have heard about him, yes—” he began, then noticed what she had called him. Percy blinked, more than a bit confused. “Uh— when have I…? How did you—?”
Annabeth laughed. Her eyes glistened. The sound was calm and sweet, and Percy felt a bit intoxicated.
“There are many more mysteries around than just me, you know?” she offered, only, and Percy’s intrigue only grew bigger. To a worrisome size, apparently, that made his still racing heart bolt one more time — much for his ribcage and lungs’ dismay. He could only blink at her again, a bit lost in what were the implications that were clearly there, just out of his reach and understanding.
Annabeth laughed again and, taking advantage of his shocked state, leaned forward and petted Ms. O’Leary’s head, grabbing her furry face and placing a kiss to the top of her snout. Percy still couldn’t quite move, and Annabeth all but offered a hand for him to shake. Instinctively, he took it.
“Lovely thing, to meet you, Mr. Jackson,” she said, her grip firm and confident while his was a bit weaker. No lovelier than you, his brain offered just to break him a bit more. God, the woman must be a deity. Some sort of sorcerer. A type of siren. And Percy was more than under her spell.
“Yeah—” he tried and shook his head back to consciousness and his physical body. “Uh, I—” he cleared his throat. Then, smiled at the amusement on her face. “I can definitely say the same, Miss Chase. And my apologies, again, for the intrusion to your backyard,” he added, still holding her grip, motioning to the happy dog beside him.
Annabeth laughed again. Percy could really get used to the sound.
“No apologies needed, that you can be sure. She’s quite sweet, and I loved her company,” she told him, looking at the dog, who barked gleefully. “You’re more than welcome anytime. God knows my cat has more than abused of your hospitality,” she continued, and it was Percy’s turn to dismiss her words.
“She could never,” he smiled. “She’s more than welcome anytime, as well,” and he held back his tongue when his brain wanted to add ‘so are you’ to his sentence. Annabeth smiled at him again, eyes leaving the dog and fixturing on his.
Percy felt like an idiot. In a weirdly good way.
They were still holding hands. In a handshake, sure, but it had stopped a while before. Percy felt like flying, like falling, like running a marathon as he registered the warmth of her hand in his, the softness of her touch.
He desperately wanted to make her one more ordinary thing in his life, like waking up, walking the dog, going to work. While he loved the mystery and the secrecy, there was a sudden urge, a sudden pull on his chest that beseeched him to want to discover, to unravel, to just know what he was talking about, who he was talking to.
They only let go of each other’s hands and gazes when a loud honking sounded, and Ms. O’Leary was more than happy to go after that. Percy cleared his throat, Annabeth looked down at the grass, Ms. O’Leary bolted the hell out of her garden and into their own, barking along with the honking and the silence and the chirping birds.
“I’ll make sure she doesn’t scare the life out of any passerby,” Percy said, turning around to look at where the dog had disappeared to. Annabeth chuckled, nodding along. “It was a real pleasure to meet you, Miss Chase,” he said again, nodding his head and bowing his body slightly.
Her smile softened.
“I’m best friends with your dog, now,” she said, and Percy arched an eyebrow. “You can call me Annabeth, if you want to,” she added, and Percy sincerely felt like leaping with happiness.
He smiled back at her.
“I’m Percy,” he offered, and nodded his head again. “It’s nice to put a face to a legend,” he joked, and Annabeth scoffed.
“A legend?” she questioned. “And how are those myths treating me?”
Percy’s eyes glimmered in defiance, and a rather mischievous smile took over the side of his lips.
“Surprisingly enough, despite the poetry and pantomime, they don’t seem to make you justice,” he said, and Annabeth’s surprised expression was the last thing he saw before turning around, after one more bow, and walking back towards his own backyard.
Percy was sure that the echo of her laughter would be the thing to lull him to sleep, that night.
Most days, since he had moved back to New York, were kind to his soul.
New Rome was a calm neighborhood, bathed with sunlight and tranquility if one ignored completely the absolute psychosis that ensued overgrown men trying to capture a very smart, wide-eyed, yellow cat. The people were kind and offered greetings as he walked the sidewalks, and the traffic and flow of people during the day were all more positive points to living and building a life there.
He liked it, the silence at night and the early rustle of people starting their day and making something of their lives. The car engines that roared, and talking children and people, the way it all seemed so unlike the city he remembered growing up in. It wasn’t chaotic, or individualistic, or lonely, after all.
No, the loneliness only creeped up on him when he was inside his house, no one in sight but his reflection in the mirror. At every other moment, it was a kind life to live — one he could, and hoped he would, get used to. The getting up every day and seeing the children he had learned to adore so much, the coming back home and meeting his four-legged friends, the golden light of sunset that washed over his life, his worries, his tiredness.
He could get used to it. He was, Percy thought, getting used to it more easily than he thought he possibly could when he first got back to North American territory.
And, of course; he could get used to her.
It had been a scary realization, at first, just how easy and fast it could be to grow accustomed to seeing her face, hearing her voice, basking in her laughter. And if that was all, then perhaps Percy would be in less trouble — but Annabeth’s mind was mesmerizing, and her ideas and plans and stories were something he could spend forever listening to over a warm cup of coffee and blue chocolate-chip cookies.
Most days were kind, especially after they had become friends of some sort.
After the night they met, Percy had had trouble with keeping the dazzling woman and her stunning presence out of his mind, his thoughts constantly wandering to her smile, her bright eyes, her dark skin. There wasn’t a single detail of hers he could possibly forget, and yet there were so many more he desperately wanted to memorize and map and be capable of drawing down just in case his memory failed him at some point.
It only got terribly worse, the wish to turn her into another form of art, when she had appeared to greet him soon after her cat had bit him an early goodbye, probably trying to avoid some maniac with traps, a few days after their first meeting. The thoughts that wouldn’t leave his mind suddenly stopped working when, as he cooked himself dinner and tried his best to avoid Ms. O’Leary bright, pleading eyes, someone had knocked on the glass of the sliding doors that led to his backyard.
He nearly had a heart attack, because there was nothing else he could do but jump in despair and clutch the wooden spoon harder until his knuckles turned white. Useless for defense, probably, but it could work if paired the tomato in his other hand. Percy spun around hurriedly, just to nearly drop everything — he did drop his jaw — when a smiling figure waved her hand and arched an eyebrow at his stance.
He let out a relieved breath, putting the wooden spoon and the tomato over the sink behind his back and then placing a hand to his chest. Ms. O’Leary was already up and trotting towards Annabeth, completely forgetting about the carrots Percy pretended not to see she was trying to steal, and the woman was more than happy to offer her some head scratches.
“Hi,” he said, his heart still thumping is his chest for the fright. Annabeth looked up at him, and at least tried to look sheepish.
“Hello,” she replied. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention to scare you,” she spoke again. Percy shook his head.
“You’re fine,” he dismissed her words. “Ms. O’Leary. Back,” he ordered the dog, that stopped trying to ogle Annabeth to the ground, but still didn’t quiet down as she sat back. “Please, come in.’
She nods, smiling at Ms. O’Leary one more time and then stepping inside the house. Percy turns back to the pan over the fire as she turns her head around slowly, apparently studying the place. Her observing eyes seemed trained to do it, and yet Percy couldn’t find it in him to be self-conscious about whether or not she’d find the place messy, clustered or just filled with a bad taste overall.
He could feel her eyes on his back when she approached him.
“Oh,” she emitted. “Did I come at a bad time?” she asked. Percy didn’t take his eyes off the sauce.
“That depends,” he said. “Have you had dinner yet?”
Her eyes were wandering around again.
“Oh, no, actually. I just came home from work, and I’ll fix something quick for me, soon enough,” she chuckled.
Percy smiled, now turning to look at her, whose face was turned in the other direction.
“Well, then your timing is quite perfect,” he said. “Do you like salt pancakes?” he asked, flashing her a smile.
She snapped her head at him, and blinked a few times. Only then her eyes seemed to see what he was doing, as if the apron wasn’t enough of a give-away. Her eyes widened.
“That sounds amazing, really, but I—” she cleared her throat. Both of them seemed surprised at her stuttering. Percy could tell it wasn’t something that usually happened. “I did not come now just to take advantage of the, honestly, really good smell coming from that stove.”
Percy arched an eyebrow playfully.
“Oh, really?” he asked, a shit-eating grin gracing the side of his lips. “So, you coincidently come to one’s house at dinner time and don’t dare expect an invitation?” he said, and Annabeth’s mouth fell open, clearly offended.
Lovely, lovely lady.
“Alright, sir, I—” she began, defensive, and then studied the expression on his face, the realization dawning on her that he wasn’t bothered, but teasing her to gauge her reaction. She bit the tip of her tongue, a smile spreading on her lips. “Oh, no. You’ve discovered my plan,” she shook her head, and Percy gasped in false offense. “I cannot believe I was caught to easily.”
“I just happen to be really good at this, you see,” he said.
“Reading people?”
“Cooking,” he retorted, and Annabeth tilted her head. “What? You think you’re the first one to invade my house looking for food?” he asked, rolling his eyes with good humor, and she laughed.
And, truly, there was just one more thing to remain imprinted in Percy’s memory and carved into the nuances of his bruised soul.
Whenever he wasn’t trying to remember the exact shade of dark amber that belonged to her irises — and it suited her so completely, as if all the secrets of the world were frozen and waiting to be dug out from her ancient-colored eyes —, Percy vaguely wished he was a musician to capture the tone of her voice and the pitch of her laughter into sheets and tiles and chords, so the world would forever have registered the utter manifestation of grace and joy.
And he wasn’t someone to be dazzled so easily, per se; but there was something about that woman, who was laughing in his kitchen and charming the hell out of his dog, that made his heart twist and his brain cells burn and his thoughts race a little less.
“Does it happen often?” she asked.
“You should ask you cat,” he said, flashing her a smile before looking back at what he was doing. “She happens to always know how to steal whatever it is that I’m cooking.”
Annabeth couldn’t even look bothered with the information. Instead, she hummed.
“I’ll trust her taste, then,” she laughed. Percy’s smile glistened. “She happens to have a really good one.”
He decided not to dwell on it.
“Please, take a seat,” he gestured to the tall stools in front of her. “If you don’t mind waiting for a bit,” he added, and she shook her head.
“Of course, I don’t,” she said, pulling one of the stools. “If you don’t mind my company, as well,” Annabeth added.
Percy wanted to guffaw at the absolute joke.
Instead, he chuckled.
“Well, I must admit I am much more used to a feline’s company, indeed,” he said, not a hint of seriousness in his tone, despite the honesty. “But I do believe that, if she’s that lovely, her mistress could hardly be a shrew,” he confessed, and Annabeth’s grin was as defying as her narrowed eyes, not once hinting to be slightly menacing.
“Oh, is that what you think?” she wondered. “What makes you think we’re anything alike?”
Percy shrugged.
“You both know at what time I come home and at what time I’m cooking dinner, for one,” he suggested, and Annabeth groaned, unaffected. “The two of you seem to analyze every single movement of mine,” he added, and the woman arched an eyebrow. “And I have the slight impression that the two of you outsmart everyone in every room you walk in.”
And despite his light-hearted tone, there wasn’t a single lie seeping through his words. Percy, for some reason, really hoped she would believe him, and he wanted to believe that she did as her smile softened as well as her features.
“You think so?” she asked. Sounded genuine, and Percy wondered just when was the last time someone around her treated her like the person she was, and didn’t see her as the prize they desired.
“I do,” he said in a breath. The simple answer seemed to have gotten Annabeth a bit lost in thought, and Percy didn’t quite know what to do. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, and he did have to manage the stove, but he wasn’t sure how much she liked to be lost in her own head. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked, then, and her eyes snapped back at him. “I have water, juice, soda and perhaps a wine somewhere,” he offered, and her smile was still soft when she spoke.
“Soda sounds good, if you don’t mind,” she said.
“I really don’t,” he replied.
And from then on, it seemed like they were old friends speaking whenever they met. Annabeth would appear often, and Percy’s heart and soul would light up at the sight of her — she would come when she came home, or soon after her cat had set off to trick some other idiot into believing she’d be caught. Some nights and weekends, they would play with Ms. O’Leary on her backyard, and some others would be spent in his, just chatting life away and speaking of mindless things none of them quite had an opinion on.
It was easy, talking to her, and Percy was terrified of it. Annabeth was beautiful, yes, but knowing her made her presence and the mere knowledge of her existence so much richer, so ethereal. The woman was kind, and funny, and often stubborn — she’d call it ‘prideful’, and name it her fatal flaw one afternoon when they were sharing a cup of coffee and drowning their hard days in a batch of brownies that she — Percy, really, but he would give her the credit just to see her smile — had baked earlier with his help.
And Percy knew it was a mistake, from the moment he had first heard her laugh, to get close to Annabeth Chase. Not because there were other countless, brainless men desperate to win her heart, but because he knew he would have no other option than falling helplessly in love with her as soon as he had looked in her eyes. There was too much life, too much shine, and there was just so much a human soul could take before surrendering.
But those days spent with her were good — the best he had lived, even. The city didn’t break his heart, then, because it had somehow led him to her; the world wasn’t cold and boring, anymore, because she was incredibly passionate about it; his scars didn’t feel so hideous, all of a sudden, because she, somehow, saw the man behind them.
Those days were kind, and Percy wished that he could live in them forever.
Those days were good, and there wasn’t a thing he would ever change about them.
“You didn’t hesitate to nearly kill me, that time; why, on Earth, are you just standing there?” Percy asked, raising his eyes from the papers he was reading. He sat at his dinner table, right in front of the sliding doors where Annabeth stood by. He saw her frame approaching a few minutes early, and had waited for what she would say.
Instead, she just stood there, staring at him.
“You seemed focused,” she supplied, smiling, and taking a step inside.
“I’m going over some assignments,” he offered, and gestured with one hand that she took a seat beside him. Her eyebrows arched in surprise, and a wider smile took over her face. “What?” he asked.
“Are you a teacher?” she asked, her voice filled with admiration, all of a sudden. Percy felt his cheeks blushing, and ducked his head a bit, trying to hide it. “Really?”
Percy chuckled.
“Is that so surprising?” he asked, lifting his eyes to meet hers. She was still smiling when she shook her head.
“No, actually,” she said. “I just… Can’t really picture you staying still for so many hours a day,” the woman laughed, and Percy felt the need to laugh along.
“Oh, that. I’m the principal’s nightmare. My classes are hardly common,” he told her, and she laughed.
“What do you teach?”
“History,” he said. “Ancient history. Didn’t find it in me to be a fan of American,” he shuddered jokingly, and Annabeth nodded along.
“It suits you,” she said. “And how do you teach? Dressing up as Greek gods? Playing the parts?” Annabeth joked.
Percy kept quiet, pressing his lips together. She gasped beside him.
“There’s no way!” she exclaimed. “Are you serious?!”
“The kids learn much better like that!” he exclaimed, too, dropping the pen in his hand and gesturing widely. “Really! I mean, the art teacher came to thank me for the sword fighting when they had to play something of Shakespeare’s!”
Annabeth flapped her hands, nearly jumping in her seat.
“Sword fighting!” she repeated, and Percy babbled something. “Do you have the sword here? Can I see it?” she asked quickly, and Percy blinked a few times. He wasn’t sure he was expecting some reproach, but surely he couldn’t have expected such excitement coming from her. “Can you teach me?” she asked, her wide brown eyes suddenly puppy-like.
Gods. He was doomed.
But he got up to get the sword anyway.
“People are terrible,” Annabeth said, flopping gracefully on his couch.
Percy, who was slicing some lettuce by the kitchen sink, looked up at her.
“That, they are,” he agreed. “What happened?”
She groaned. Even that, Percy found endearing.
“Tough client,” she explained. “ Why would you ask an architect’s opinion if you’re unwilling to listen to it?”
Percy stopped what he was doing.
“You’re an architect,” he stated, like an idiot. Annabeth rolled her head to look at him.
“I am,” she said. “Have I never told you?”
Percy shook his head.
“I don’t think so, no,” he replied. “That’s really nice.”
She smiled.
“It is,” Annabeth agreed. “Would you listen to my opinions?” she asked, then, with a smirk.
Percy frowned.
“I’d most likely listen to anything you have to say,” he started. “But was that your subtle way to find an entry to criticize my taste and the disposition of my furniture?”
Annabeth pressed her lips together, wiggling her eyebrows.
Percy sighed. And asked.
Kitty cat would make him company, as well, whenever Annabeth wasn’t capable to. He figured they didn’t like to leave the house completely empty, perhaps, or maybe kitty cat didn’t like to be in the presence of more than one human at a time. Percy didn’t mind it in the slightest, gladly greeting the feline whenever she jumped through a window or walked through the door.
To her, he’d often talk about thoughts that had been lurking around his mind that day. Nothing too deep or elaborate, but some things he wasn’t sure it was sane or smart to share with his new-found friend to whom he might be a little too attached to already. Kitty cat never seemed to judge him — except the one time he took the olives out of his mini-pizza, and she seemed incredibly offended about it — and she was a really, really good listener.
So, when she had visited him in one of those busy days of his and Annabeth’s, he was relieved to see her well. But there was annoyance bubbling up, and Percy wasn’t happy to admit that it was directed towards the cat’s mistress — kitty cat had run to his house in a hurry he had learned to only associate with her running away from yet another stupid suitor of Annabeth’s that didn’t mind hurting the cat to get the damned key.
They were all three in his living room — Ms. O’Leary by the open doors, kitty cat over the coffee table and Percy lying on the floor with a pillow under his head — and he could still hear the incessant steps and grumblings of the person who had been chasing the animal that night. They were loud and he seemed to want to scare the feline more and more, and Percy had refrained from sending Ms. O’Leary after him, as well.
Something told him that the person wouldn’t bother trying to hurt a dog, either, for he was already trying to get the cat at all costs.
Percy sighed. More times than needed. And there was no harm in talking to the cat, after all.
“Sometimes, I get really annoyed with your mistress, kitty cat,” he confessed to the silent living room. The feline raised her head to look at him. “I just— I don’t think that letting you roam around with the key in your neck is the safest option. I wish she’d just take the damn key back.”
The cat meowed. And Percy pretended that it was the answer he thought it was.
“I’m not doubting your ability or either of your intelligences, for the record,” he explained. “It’s just… There are bad people. Terrible ones. Some of which you’ve encountered. And I— I fear that—” he swallowed his words, the thoughts swarming inside his head. “Annabeth would neve back out on her word. And if one of those men ever get the key, there no — they aren’t measuring efforts to capture you. Thy don’t care if you’ll be harmed or wounded,” he reasoned. “And you mean the world for her, and they know it. It’s no secret.”
He stopped. A second later, the cat meowed. Like a question.
“I wonder, and fear, that, if they’re willing to harm you,” he turned his head to look at her. “What wouldn’t they fear doing to her?”
The silence fell over the living room, as if she understood what he had said. Percy looked back up at the ceiling and didn’t say a word more. Soon, he heard the cat moving — and a second later, she jumped over his abdomen.
Percy huffed a breath, and he chuckled. The cat didn’t mind him moving, and settled herself over his chest, then, lying down.
When he purred, Percy imagined she was trying to ease his mind, somehow, and he chose to take it.
He placed a hand over her head, petting it softly, and closed his eyes.
“Did you just send a letter attached to your dog’s collar to get me to come here?” Annabeth asked, stepping inside his house through the sliding doors and holding up a folded sheet of paper in the air. Ms. O’Leary walked behind her, barking happily and wiggling her tail.
“You’re one to talk about attaching things to pets’ collars,” he arched an eyebrow, grinning mischievously at her from the kitchen. Annabeth gasped in false offense and walked inside the house. “Also, I couldn’t leave the pans on the stove.”
She walked closer to him, smelling the air and then resting her hip on the side of the kitchen island.
“And what is so ‘extremely important’ that I should ‘come as soon as possible’ that Ms. O’Leary wouldn’t leave without me?” she asked, smirking.
“Try this,” he said, a spoon in his hand that he dipped inside on of the pans and turned around with it, offering to Annabeth, who sort of pulled her head back in surprise.
“What is—” she tried, but Percy used the chance to just put it inside her mouth. She grumbled in annoyance, and the man just smiled. She glared at him, and then licked her lips to focus on the flavor on her tongue. Tomato sauce. A really, really good one. “Oh, my God. This is good.”
Percy’s smile was blinding.
“Thank you!” he said. “I was starting to freak out. Think I tasted it too much,” he laughed.
“What are you making?” she asked, getting closer to him and the pans. “Looks really good.”
“Skillet chicken parmesan with gnocchi,” he told her, and Annabeth hummed in appreciation.
“Wow. And how did you come up with it?” she asked.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I found a recipe book around here. Chose a random page and voilà!” he said, bowing slightly. Annabeth laughed.
“Alright, that’s fair,” she said, smiling widely. Then it turned sheepish, all of a sudden. “And is the recipe one-person sized, or…?” she asked, and Percy snorted.
“Oh, please,” he said. “Everything I do takes you into consideration,” he added, and so casually, as if it was the universal truth to be told, that Annabeth was slightly taken aback. Her smile fell for a second, as she waited to see if he would realize just what he had said, and he didn’t. He didn’t, because it was plain and simple as that — she was on his mind, always and it happened to reflect in his daily life.
Percy continued stirring the sauce, and Annabeth watched him as a fond smile took over her lips.
That was one emergency she would gladly deal with every day, if she could.
Some days rolled by over Percy, it seemed.
While some mornings seemed to be benevolent over his skin, the sunlight lazily finding its way to ghost over his sleeping frame, some others came with a cloud of darkness wrapped around his body — and it wasn’t the city, he had found out after trying to, a bunch of days, blame the growing metropole for all the ways his eyes didn’t capture the bright colors and the air sat heavy inside his lungs.
When the heaviness and emptiness took over his soul, Percy knew before opening his eyes. He’d wake up tired, more so than usual, and his limbs would seem to each weight a ton of bricks, all tied to him with heavy iron chains. There would be a dull noise constantly ringing in his ears, and the sadness he had felt and repressed for so many years would seem to catch up to him like a gunshot to the chest — it’d leave him breathless, tired, and with the uncontrollable desire to cry and fall apart.
Up until that morning, they hadn’t happened from the moment he’d set foot in New York again. He’d had the occasional bad day, as it would often happen, but not one like those that left him speechless and tired and less than excited to even be alive. On any other bad day, he’d be able to let the dark thoughts at bay, and mostly wash them away before night fell. His routine would carry on easily, though very more slowly than usual, and he’d find solace in his silence, his dog, and the thought that the next day could be better.
They weren’t the same, though, the ones that made his bones feel hollow and his chest be more like an open cave, echoing the pain he never screamed out of his soul. Days like those had him scared, scarred — he didn’t feel like he could trust his mind, and he wasn’t sure he could trust his body, either. Things were dull, the world was slower, and there was this piercing pain that would make him wish he’d never woken up.
Those were the days he regretted ever being alive. The ones that made him desperately want to be thrown back in time just before making the decisions that led him to that exact moment — alone, and scared, and hurt in a crowded city with no one in sight. Those were the darker days were there was always a storm brewing in the horizon, and there was nothing but darkness ahead of him. The days he spent roaming around hell, and he wasn’t sure he had much more strength to make it back like he had done so many other times.
He didn’t want to fight the same battle over and over and having the same scars reopening and leaving him to bleed and try to keep it all inside. It was tiring — exhausting, and he really, truly, desperately needed a break. Just a day, perhaps a week; he had been on that same battlefield for so long, and he was tired of the same traps and the same weapons getting to him every single time, regardless of how predictable.
Percy was tired, and there was nowhere else to run. He couldn’t get in a train and try to find the next stop where he’d be unknown and his past wouldn’t matter, anymore; he had to work in two days, and the house was still being paid for. He couldn’t get on a plane and cross the skies or get on a boat and discover the ocean — the kids had presentations on Thursday, and there was a test to be thought about on Wednesday.
And Ms. O’Leary needed to eat. He could hear her impatient steps downstairs, and decided, on that Saturday morning, that he would, at the very least, manage to go downstairs to feed his dog. Because he was an adult. And adults had to deal with adult responsibilities regardless of their desire to vanish from the world or hide in a cave and never be seen again by another living being.
The day passed in a blur as soon as his body hit the couch after filling Ms. O’Leary’s bowl. Percy couldn’t know if the hours dragged by or flew away, too absorbed in his own thoughts and nightmares and worst fears. He felt dizzy, despite not moving a muscle the whole day, busy staring at the ceiling and registering the tears that would come to his eyes and burn warpaths over his cheeks every once in a while.
Ms. O’Leary, worried about him as she always was whenever those bad days hit, stayed loyally by the floor beside his body sprawled over the couch. He felt guilty, to some extent, to condemn his faithful companion to spend the whole day doing absolutely nothing, just lying indoors while both of them sighed heavily from time to time.
It felt like his body weighed a thousand bricks, and his head was light and empty — except he couldn’t stop thinking, and each thought made him feel heavier and heavier and even more hopeless than he had been when he woke up, God knows how many hours before. The sun drew patterns on the walls and floors through the windows, but he wasn’t smart enough or alive enough to try and guess what time it was, how long it had passed, how long this forever would last.
He didn’t feel hungry, but his stomach started complaining at some point. He didn’t feel thirsty, but he was dying for a cup of water. He didn’t feel like sleeping, but he was desperately, irrevocably, bone-deeply exhausted.
The antithesis and paradoxes were what bothered him the most, when those feelings and the emptiness hit him square in the chest and knocked him out of the fight. There was so much he wanted to do, and the absolute repulse to the idea of doing anything. There was so much he felt, and the complete hollowness that came wrapped around it. There was so much he wanted to say, and so little words he knew how to pronounce. There was so much for his future, and yet, he was chained to the past.
It enraged him, and made him want to scream — but there was no voice and, if there was, he had no strength to let it out. His muscles didn’t ache, and it was somewhat worse that he felt the numbness beyond the ability of wanting to move. Percy felt nothing, but he hurt; and he desperately wanted the day to cease so he could try and live the next morning like a normal person.
The only indicator that time had passed — other than the sunlight to which he didn’t pay attention through the doors and windows — was a soft pit-pat of paws against his living room floor. Ms. O’Leary’s ears perked up before he had heard it, and she lifted her head to look at the cat, who gracefully stood by the sliding doors. Percy made his best effort to roll his head over the pillow so he could face the little creature, a faint smile trying to fool his lips.
He didn’t say anything, and the cat seemed to be taking the scene in carefully. Then, she approached both the dog and the man, leaping over Ms. O’Leary’s back (who didn’t mind it one bit) and stepping carefully on the couch. Percy’s eyes followed her every movement, and he rolled his head back to the prior position to look at the cat again.
“Hey, kitty cat,” Percy greeted, his voice heavy with the weight of what he’d cried and had yet to let out. His breathing was slow and mournful, and the cat stared at him with something his lonely mind deciphered as worry. “My apologies, lovely. I am not good company, today. Perhaps you could play with Ms. O’Leary?” he offered, hoarse and tired. The cat didn’t move, staring intently at him.
He didn’t want to argue. Much less with a cat. Usually, he’d never refuse kitty cat’s company — but he wasn’t feeling like himself. He wasn’t fine, and he wasn’t just regularly on a bad mood. He wasn’t , and that was it. And there wasn’t a way to explain it to a feline, either.
The cat stepped fully on the couch, watching him all the while, and searching for a good place near him where his body wasn’t flopped upon. Then, she sat, and lifted one paw to place it over his chest. Percy watched and couldn’t help but chuckle, though it wasn’t lightweight as if often sounded, and didn’t seem genuine. The cat’s grey eyes seemed to burn wholes in his, and there was an unexplainable desire to justify his situation to an irrational, four-legged being.
“I’m alright,” he tried, and the cat didn’t move. Sometimes, he thought she could really understand everything he told her. Her eyes were still trained on him, and her gaze seemed heavy over his face. He wondered if she could read his mind, so hard she stared at him. “Really, I’m—” he swallowed a lump in his throat. “I’m just tired,” he croaked, weak and forced.
The cat seemed to stare at his soul. It was slightly uncomfortable, as if she knew he was lying. Odd, to say the least; but then again, she was everything but common.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really don’t think I am good company today, lovely,” he repeated. "I also don’t have anything tasty for you to steal. So…” he trailed off, completely drained of even speaking a few sentences.
He sighed, and the cat seemed to realize that he really wouldn’t be doing anything but sulking until his body decided it was still worthy to move and be a productive adult with adult responsibilities and a life to carry on. Her grey eyes were still stuck on his face, and Percy closed his eyes, aiming to completely ignore the animal so he would, perhaps, not feel even worse about making yet another being worry about his existence or near lack thereof.
He couldn’t tell how long she spent starring at him, or how long had passed from the moment he heard her leaping away from the couch, the soft pit-pat receding more and more until he didn’t hear it anymore. His heart ached again, because he couldn’t even be good to those friends who didn’t even ask him much — some food, some company, not constantly trying to kill them for the key hanging on their neck — and everything was just a little too much, a little too loud, and a lot.
Percy couldn’t know when the headache began on his temples, either, making him feel like death was really the best option. His head wouldn’t feel like splitting in two, and his heart would be already broken in half. His chest wouldn’t feel constricted, and his eyes wouldn’t be sensitive to seeing that the world was real and he was fated to walk around it.
He also couldn’t know when he started hallucinating. That was new.
But it made absolutely no sense that Annabeth was standing by the garden doors, long-sleeves folded to her elbow and the sandals she wore at home on her feet. Her hair was tied in a low bun, and Percy sincerely wondered if he was seeing an angel. Perhaps he had fallen asleep, and his brain decided he had had enough already. Maybe his heart had really hurt enough to stop, and afterlife came with all the dreams he couldn’t quite grasp while on Earth.
“Percy?” Annabeth called, and Percy blinked back to the present time. He turned his head slightly to the side, and found her worried, deep copper gaze trained on his face. Her lips were turned downwards, and there was a crease in between her eyebrows. She still looked beautiful, he realized. But he wished she didn’t look so worried. Not over something so useless.
Not over him.
He didn’t reply, and his eyes fell away from her face. He didn’t want to, not really, because looking at her was beautiful and seeing her was breathtaking — right then, though, he was running out of air, and he didn’t think he deserved to look at beautiful things. He was sure the day had been bright and clear, some squeals and laughter coming from outside throughout the hours proving so, and there wasn’t anything in him that had wanted to see it.
He didn’t want to destroy beautiful things with his tear-streaked gaze.
Annabeth took a few steps forward, slowly and as softly as her cat had done a while before. Percy wasn’t sure of how long. He wasn’t sure of anything, but Annabeth seemed to be there. In his living room. Standing only a few steps from him.
Ms. O’Leary had moved, at some point, and left the way a cleared in case she wanted to approach Percy more, which she did. Her careful footsteps led her to stand right in front of his, him, her warm gaze and lightweight presence making him look upwards a bit.
Honestly, it was the sight of an angel. But his brain couldn’t formulate anything that could possibly make his heart pulse stronger, for it didn’t want to be beating at all. He stared, and she looked him up and down, looking for a problem, something to fix.
She couldn’t. There were too many — so many, so, that Percy sometimes thought that was everything he was made of.
“Should I call for help?” she asked, her voice low and her hand hanging midair, as if she wasn’t sure she could reach out for him.
He wished she wouldn’t. There would be one more thing, if she did, that he would desperately want and never have in that God forsaken city.
Percy shook his head slowly. Conscious of her presence there, he tried his best to come back to himself, to be at least a third of a human he was told he needed to be.
“Percy?” she called again, and he couldn’t know how long it had been from when she had last called him. “Are you sure I am not supposed to call anyone?”
He shook his head. She probably meant an ambulance, or the doctor that lived four houses down, but his brain couldn’t quite process it properly. There was no one she could call. Not for him.
“Then can you tell me what is happening?” she requested, her tone bathed with worry. He hated it. Her voice should never be peppered with anything other than joy and sweetness, and Percy cursed himself for being the reason it wasn’t, right then.
“My apologies,” he said. “I’m sure I’m not the best of companies tonight.”
Her frown seemed to deepen.
“I don’t think there is a moment when you are not good company, Percy,” she told him, her voice so resolute it took him a second to come up with excuses as to why she would be lying. Pity, perhaps. Mercy, maybe. Or she didn’t want to be at fault, should he succumb to the depths of his couch and disappear forever.
He had barely registered that she had sat beside him, Ms. O’Leary by their feet and no kitty cat in sight. Her hands were folded over her lap, and she sat closer than he had expected — enough so he could feel the heat of her body over his shivering skin.
He shuddered a little more violently at such perception, and her eyes didn’t miss the movement. Of course, they didn’t; they wouldn’t. He wanted to tell her that it had nothing to do with his physical form, that he was healthy and well and that skipping every meal for just a day wouldn’t kill him — but he was silenced not only by the knot inside his throat, but also the warm hand against his forehead.
He wished she’d touch him forever.
“No fever,” she said, but her hand travelled to his cheek despite her conclusion. “But I am worried, if it’s what you wonder,” she spoke again. “You were unresponsive for a few moments just now, and then as well,” Annabeth explained, and he wished he could just vanish.
Vanish, because he didn’t deserve such kindness. Disappear, because she surely had better things to do. Cease his presence over the planet because he really, really wanted his mother.
“It is not physical, what ails me,” he managed to grumble out, and she reluctantly took her hand away. He was strong enough to hold back a whimpering, pathetic sound. “It is all in my head.”
Annabeth’s face morphed into surprise, then into worry again. She looked stunning anyway, he concluded.
“That is somehow even worse,” she told him, and Percy scoffed. “Did something happen?”
He shrugged.
“Nothing worth worrying about,” he said.
“You are,” she said. In other circumstances, he might’ve fainted. He might’ve watched his heart split his chest open and fly to the nearest wall. He might’ve overthought his very presence beside her. In the ones they were into, though, he merely felt bad. Like a burden. Like he should be the last thing she ever needed to worry about. “You can talk to me, if you wish to,” Annabeth assured him, her voice now soft, though not less concerned.
And he wanted to tell her that he didn’t want to talk, and she much less needed to listen to him whining and regretting his life choices for the umpteenth time, but her gaze was gentle over his face, and her expression was sincere. Concerned, and that much he imagined he couldn’t change, but without an ounce of judgement or expectations regarding what could’ve brought him to such state.
Percy wanted to say that it wasn’t needed that she stayed, much less that she knew everything going on inside his head. He wanted to smile and recompose himself and see her back to her home so he could lock himself in his bedroom and sulk until the day his chest gave up on being hollow and started working as the frame for his heart that he was. He wanted to be alone, but he desperately needed not to feel lonely.
And, it turned out, he didn’t mind being alone with Annabeth.
Her presence was soft, and as fierce as the morning sun rays that snaked their way into one’s home, making things warm and seeable and alive. Her existence itself was like that — perfectly set to be good, to be sweet and remarkable and something one couldn’t ever forget. Stubborn, and that was something that rang in his stance and her eyes and her breathing — kind, and gentle, and something he didn’t want to fight against.
Percy looked at her, turning his head so he could see her completely. The sight took his breath away again — something he had, at that point, grown used to — as she observed how she was, tall and mighty by his side. While he was slumped over the couch, his back bound to ache the moment he decided to sit or lie down as a proper human being, she sat gracefully, legs crossed at her ankles and hands over the couch pillows.
The coat she must’ve been wearing was folded over the armchair, and the purse the carried lied by the coffee table. Ms. O’Leary seemed unbothered, her presence always constant whenever Percy was feeling like hell had ran him over, but she seemed to trust Annabeth’s capacity and presence to support him in the ways he needed.
Animals had always been better judges of situations, or so said Grover. Perhaps he should trust that, at least that once.
He sighed. The room stood silent as he tried to gather his thoughts and make everything make sense. He didn’t know what to say, where to begin.
The beginning is always a good start , his mother’s voice rang in his head. He sighed again. He wanted to cry. To scream. To put himself against the wall and then punch the wall behind his frame. He wanted his mother, his father, his friends.
He wanted to be someone else, as well.
“For long years, I was a traveler,” Percy decided to speak. If he was telling her, then context would help. “Set off to the world when I was sixteen, and traveled all around as long as I could. The world was my oyster, or so I’ve been told, and I wanted to make the most out of it. My parents supported me, never looked down or tried to change my dreams, and everything seemed so bright and so close to my young hands’ reach,” he narrated, a bit breathless, and Annabeth’s eyes were glued to his face. “I visited so, so many places. Ten years on the road, through the oceans, over places I never even thought could be real. A nomad, of sorts; forever changing, always looking for change.”
He sighed again, his breath heavy as he first spoke out of everything swirling in his mind and pooling like hourglass inside his chest. Annabeth waited patiently, her gaze ever steady, her stance never changing. There wasn’t the weight of expectations on her eyes still, and he wondered how long it’d take for it to change.
“I’d send letters and postcards and gifts from whenever I had been last and trust my family would have faith they would get another thing soon enough, so they wouldn’t worry,” he told her, running his hands over his face. “For nearly a decade, that is how things would work, and they worked quite perfectly. Whenever I stayed longer anywhere, I’d tell them so they could send me letters as well, if they wanted to. It was fine. Things were fine,” he said, then stopped.
He didn’t know when they weren’t fine anymore, every little thing in his life. If it happened in Strand-Upon-Avon, Lyon, if it happened in Brussels. If it was Tokyo, or Moskow, or Kiev. It could’ve been in Cairo, or Dakar, or Argel. He didn’t know, he couldn’t have — traveling had been his life for so long, and he didn’t know when he had died in between one city and the next.
Annabeth seemed to have realized he got caught up in thought, suddenly, and chose it was a good moment to nudge the story out of him. He was thankful, somewhat. Saying things out loud did put it into perspective.
“What changed?” she asked.
Percy’s laughter was cold. It didn’t suit him, Annabeth decided. Not him, when even his ocean blue eyes were warm and welcoming, despite the melancholy she found in then right then. The saddest blues she’d ever seen. The most beautiful ones, as well.
“I did,” he replied. “I don’t know when. Or how. Or why. But I changed, and it was empty. Traveling still brought me happiness, I believe it always will, but I wanted something more. Something— permanent. My heart didn’t feel right in place. My mind was everywhere. I belonged nowhere, in the end,” Percy admitted, and it stung deeper than he’d like to think about.
Home , he realized. His heart had never felt at home.
“So, I wanted to make something out of my life. More than just being someone who didn’t belong anywhere, whose name people would forget, whose face no one would remember. I learned a few languages in the process of knowing new countries,” he said, the fond memories now sounding bitter in his tongue. “And decided I could settle down somewhere. But I wasn’t someone anymore, then. I was already lost. I had no compass, no navigator, no way to go back to someone I didn’t even know,” he sighed, and shook his head. “The communication with my family started fumbling somewhere along the seventh year. The sixth, perhaps. Rare postcards, even rarer letters, no pictures.”
Annabeth watched as his face morphed into a nostalgic, painful expression. She could tell that, despite his love for the travels he had done and cherished, there was an older, deeper hurt that came with being far, with being distant in more ways than one, in the end.
Percy took a deep breath, now eager to tell her everything. There was a lightness that came with speaking up, with speaking out, and a comfort that emanated from her deep brown eyes, never judgmental.
“For the past few years, I have lived in Rome. I wanted to study, to make something after roaming around mindlessly for so long. And I did,” he said. “I did make something out of it. At some point, though, I lost some sense of self. More than before,” he breathed in. “I was freaking out — there was so much to do, and I felt like I had so little time. I got tired. Too tired to keep on wandering, to keep on wondering, to even keep living my life,” Percy sighed, and Annabeth’s eyes were attentive, but not less gentle over his face. “I stopped even considering reaching out to my mother, my father, my stepfather. My friends, and my family; they didn’t know of me anymore. Nothing.”
And the regret in his voice echoed around the living room walls. Cold, and broken, and something to tear kingdoms apart — to tear him to pieces, after all.
“They don’t ,” he realized. “They know nothing about me. Nothing of me. I wonder—" his voice broke. Somehow, Annabeth understood. I wonder if they still think that I’m alive.
Percy shook his head, banning the thoughts from his head. He could hope; he did hope. That his mother’s faith was strong, and his father’s convictions were yet to be mistaken. That his stepfather’s beliefs still held them together, and his friends’ love never ceased to give them something to hold on to.
“And here I am,” Percy said, a careful, wounded huff. An exhausted sigh. “I moved back to New York to try and… And make amends. And tell them that I’m fine, I’m still here, I —” he groaned. “And you are the only person I have ever talked to in this God forsaken city. Don’t get me wrong, that’s—” he begun, and Annabeth shook her head softly, dismissing his explanations. “My mother—” his voice failed. He swallowed. “I didn’t tell anyone. I came back expecting to… Fix things, perhaps. I wanted— I want to see them again, to be with them. But I’m—”
“Scared,” Annabeth offered when his voice faltered. Again. Her tone was careful, worried. “Because you don’t think they would have you back?”
He shook his head.
“I think they would ,” he said. “But what if I find out they won’t?” the fear rang around, and he had never felt more hopeless. “I’ve been gone for more than a decade. They’ve never met the man I became. I don’t even know if they’d—"
Love me , went unspoken. Annabeth’s heart broke inside her chest. There was more he could say, she knew, but she doubted, and he was sure, that he wouldn’t be able to put it into words, mostly because he didn’t know what to think about any of it. It pained her more than she wanted to admit, but a lot less than she hoped to realize. It made sense, in a way, that he harbored so much weight over his shoulders, and that he hid inside his house so much.
She wished it didn’t make sense. She wished there wasn’t so much hurt written over his face and so many ghosts wrapping themselves around his shoulders. She wished the blue in his eyes weren’t so deeply scarred, the perfect match to the rawest form of melancholy.
“You are too good to others,” she said, then, her voice soft and careful. “Why don’t you find it in you to be good, at least once, to yourself?”
Percy’s eyes snapped towards her, suddenly, and they looked a lot like the ocean, much more than usual, when tears were clouding his vision. Annabeth’s expression was sad for him, but there wasn’t pity — something Percy was eternally thankful for, knowing it’d break him to have her pitying his situation. A pitying situation, indeed, and he couldn’t deny it; but still, it’d tear him down.
“I don’t—" Percy started, but he didn’t know what he wanted to say.
“Deserve it?” she offered, and Percy looked elsewhere. Her voice was a bit challenging, and Percy knew better than try to argue. “Percy. The mere fact that you think they would have you back means that they probably would. And look; I can understand the fear. It’s been a long time, and there is a lot of explaining to do. But, Percy,” she said. “For what you know of your mother, father, stepfather, friends — are they the kind of people to completely disregard your reasons for doing what you did?”
It took him a second. A minute, perhaps. He shook his head, even if reluctantly.
“So,” she started again. “Is your fear of them not loving you you’ve become, or are you afraid of facing that man yourself?”
Percy didn’t reply, and they both knew the answer. He had spent so long running away and mingling with different people, different cultures, that he had completely forgotten how it once was not to be a chameleon, forever changing so he would meet people’s needs and expectations.
And he was a coward, as well, because he knew his mother would understand. He knew his stepfather and stepmother wouldn’t hold it against him. He knew his father and half-brothers would most likely hug him for an alarming amount of hours and refuse to let him out of their sight again.
Percy knew that Grover would cry, probably slap him a few times, and then hug him as if the world was ending. He knew that Beckendorf and Jason would pretend to act cool, and then fall apart as soon as Percy offered them a hug. He knew that Nico and Thalia were most likely to hold a grudge but allow him to try and rebuilt their relationship with them if he wanted to.
Because those people had raised him, and they had always been constant. Because their love was unwavering, and there was nothing about them to fear — and, still, Percy was terrified. There wasn’t a single thing he had done in his life that had been slightly as hard as that, and he wasn’t sure about how to approach the subject, or even if he should. Those people had raised him, yes, but their lives carried on without him, and they surely had moved on already.
He was terrified to ever discover that he couldn’t belong anymore. That he didn’t fit in his lives as more than a long-lost memory.
What if his mother didn’t look at him the same? What if she had forgotten what is like to love him, to have him around, and her choice was to entirely pretend that he wasn’t there at all? What if he had hurt them so much, for so long, that they didn’t want to revisit that part, that face of their past?
A hand was placed over his chest, and Percy’s watery eyes darted to Annabeth, still talking to him. She had moved a little closer, probably noticing that he had been catastrophizing for a minute. It was comforting, her touch. Settling, her presence.
“Particularly,” Annabeth said, smiling softly. “I rather like the man I see in front of me. And something tells me that someone who has raised a person as kind as you,” she tilted her head to the side. Percy felt his chest melting. “Will also be extremely proud of him.”
The tears he had been trying to stop suddenly fell. Silently, as was the living room, and Annabeth didn’t move.
The weight inside his chest didn’t fade away, and his fears still lurked in the shadows of his hollow bones. But then, with such a wonderful woman looking at him as if every problem had a solution — and like he wasn’t the problem he sure felt like being — an inch of his heart seemed to be pierced back into place, and one crack on his soul seemed to mend.
He smiled, still teary eyed still after a few minutes, and Annabeth got up from the couch, stretching a hand towards him.
“Come on,” she said. “I have heard a lot about blue pie, but I haven’t tried any in all the while I have known you,” she smiled, and Percy felt like crying again. Honestly, he was a wreck. A complete, absolute mess — and she was still smiling at him.
He accepted her hand and was surprised to find that she was rather strong as she pulled him up. She laughed when his face contorted in discomfort, his back screaming in complaint after being abused in such an uncomfortable position on the couch for so long — and he didn’t know how long, after losing complete track of time from the moment he’d managed to get downstairs.
“I miss being sixteen, God,” he mumbled, and Annabeth laughed again.
“I don’t think the couch would have had mercy regardless of your age,” she said. “It’s a rather uncomfortable one.”
Percy managed to laugh. The weight inside his chest didn’t feel like killing him, for a few seconds.
“Are you suggesting I change my couch, Miss Chase?” he asked, and she shrugged.
“Oh, well, who am I to say anything?” she asked. “An architect and interior designer, only. I know not much about these subjects, Mr. Jackson,” she said, the mischievous grin that matched her so well making an appearance.
Percy laughed, shaking his head. It wasn’t as happy was it usually was, or as carefree as she was used to hear — but it was sincere, and it would have to be enough. It was, she thought, and Percy took a deep breath.
Some days were bad.
But there was still the rest of the calendar.
Being vulnerable, as it happens, wasn’t only about allowing someone else to see you cry your heart out or listen as you speak about your regretful past while slumped in the couch as if adulthood wasn’t a thing to be dealt with on a daily basis. It was spending afternoons together, cooking dinner and watching someone else steal blue cookies from a jar; it came with playing in someone’s backyard with your bear-sized dog; it meant spilling secrets as if there was nothing big, bitter, or painful about them.
Being vulnerable, it turned out, came progressively with falling in love. Or, perhaps, it was the other way around. Maybe it wasn’t any of either, or everything about both. Percy didn’t know, and he didn’t actually care.
Everything he knew was that falling in love with Annabeth was inevitable. And even if he could avoid it, he wouldn’t dare to even consider the option — there was something kind in falling in love. There was something ethereal, merciful, blissful in falling in love and loving her. Her, specifically. Annabeth, and her deep copper eyes, bright smile, ebony-warm skin. Annabeth, and how her eyebrows scrunched together when he didn’t make sense, or how her face would light up whenever she gave up on him doing so.
The feeling was all-compassing, and it came like tidal waves whenever he thought about it, about every little thing related to her, harder then usual. The feeling was kind, calm like waves hitting the shore on a sunny summer morning as he went about his day with the knowledge that she was real, and he knew her, and he got to love her for it.
Loving, he figured, as serene and settling. Surprising and predictable, because it still amazed him how much more he found he could love her with each passing day, even though Percy knew he would fall more and more in love as long as he lived.
And reminiscing on it on a warm night, in the company of his four-legged friends — Ms. O’Leary happily distracted with a cow bone he had given her, and kitty cat resting atop one of the shelves in his living room while he drank some tea at the table —, Percy couldn’t quite keep it inside anymore. Not such a pristine, beautiful feeling.
He couldn’t risk it staying caged with the messes and the turmoil and the ugly things the unsaid turned into. He couldn’t risk it becoming one more thing he never dared to talk about, and he wouldn’t let it become one more regret he carried around with remorse because he was never brave enough to face it, to put it into words.
And if he was merely confessing to a cat, than it was a detail. It was something, he figured, and it was enough — she had been, after all, the catalyst for everything. For the shared afternoons, the unlikely friendships, the feelings that ran deep inside his veins and watered the withered flowers in the forgotten gardens of his soul. He couldn’t keep it all in, anymore; especially something so sweet, so bright, so beautiful.
He wanted it to be written in time, to be registered in the sheets of history that covered their existence and memorized their footsteps and falls. He wanted to talk about it — to say it, even if it wasn’t to the person he wanted to say it to. That much, sadly, he couldn’t quite do. He wouldn’t.
He figured that her most loyal companion would be the next best option.
“Hey, kitty cat?” he called in the peacefulness of the living room, and the cat turned her head to look at him, still lying gracefully over the bookshelf. “I have a confession to make.”
Her tail moved gracefully behind her; the grey eyes attentive to his words. Her small ears moved, as if she was doing whatever she could to listen better to whatever it was he had to say. His voice was soft, and he was sincere, and a smile was already growing over his lips.
“I am in love,” he said, and her tail stopped immediately. Percy wondered if he was seeing things, but her eyes seemed to ask a question. “Yeah. Quite redundant, at this point, as it seems my own reflection knows it already. I mean, I’ve known, but—” he cut himself off, trying to gather his thoughts. If he was going to talk about it, then he’d do it calmly, breathing in and out and not just word-vomiting for the nearest being to hear.
The cat meowed. She tilted her head. Percy chuckled. What an odd little being, he thought for the hundredth time. He inhaled before speaking again.
“You know her, yes. As it happens, you know her quite well,” he sighed. “You see, kitty cat. I fell in love with the only person I was terrified to fall for. Annabeth Chase,” he said, and then thought that, perhaps, the cat wouldn’t know her owner’s name. “Your mistress.”
The cat stopped moving. Then, like lightning hitting the ground, she was up and talking several steps backwards, despite their distance, getting closer to the wall behind her. Percy’s heart clenched, but he could understand.
She’d been running away for years, and running around for God knows how long, trying to avoid people who wanted her mistress’ heart for themselves. To have the only person she trusted not to desire it so selfishly admit he, too, would want the woman’s heart — though in a perfectly honest chain of events — would definitely sound scary.
It was probably a reflex, at that point, to run and hide. He wished it hadn’t been like that.
“Don’t you know me already, kitty cat?” he asked, regardless, voice soft and low as he looked at the feline, both hands far from his body and where she could see them. “I’m not taking your key. Not then, not now, not ever. Don’t you trust me?” he asked and felt slightly ridiculous about it.
But, then again, he had been talking to a feline and Ms. O’Leary for a really long time. And she seemed to understand his words so well that ir made sense, to request an answer to his question.
The cat seemed to relax a little, still alarmed. She tilted her head again and didn’t try to hide any further.
Percy sighed. Something eased on his soul to have the answer to his question.
“I wish she’d just take the key back, honestly; your mistress, I mean,” he confessed. “It freaks me out. It pains me, too, that this — her heart , her future — comes down to a game of hide-and-seek. I hate that—” he sighed again, frustrated. “You know that already, don’t you, kitty cat? She isn’t a prize to be won. A trophy to be claimed. She’s—” his expression melted in a smile. He stopped talking.
The cat meowed again. He looked back at her from wherever he was staring at and found her wide eyes to look curious. She had stepped closer to the edge of the bookshelf again, and Percy couldn’t help but smile.
“What? Want to hear a full confession?” he asked, laughing. After a second more staring at him, she sat down. The key wiggled in the chain. Percy took that as an affirmative. And laughed again. “I am lucky, you know? That you weren’t afraid of dogs and chose to come to my backyard, that night. You gave me so much more than just your lovely company, kitty cat,” he said, earnest. “I wonder if you can even understand just how absolutely fantastic your mistress is. How breathtaking, mind-blowing, worth-fighting-for everything about her is.”
He looked out the kitchen window over the sink. The moonlit sky was compassionate as he allowed his thoughts to wonder.
“At first, when I moved here, I couldn’t understand the commotion. The ordeal. The whole game everyone wanted to play. I thought it was odd — people wanted to marry someone for looks, only? Were they willing to trap an innocent animal to have their way with someone they only considered a pretty face, nothing more?” he continued. “I still can’t understand it, honestly. I mean— the first time I saw Annabeth? I thought I might have just walked into, I don’t know, Olympus. And met Aphrodite herself,” he laughed, shaking his head. The thought was still something he was ready to argue on. “Of course, I could understand the love-at-first-sight thing the neighborhood seemed to have going on. But still. Marrying just for looks? Risking hurting an animal just to force someone to— ‘reciprocate’ isn’t even the word. They just— argh!” he shook his head, slightly annoyed.
Then, he turned to the cat. His voice was sober and serious, all of a sudden, as if he was talking to a person, to someone that could understand every single thing he said. Again, not uncommon when it came to their friendship; still, something funny, hilarious to even imagine. Especially considering the authority in his tone when he next spoke.
“If you ever find a really enchanting feline, kitty cat, don’t go trapping them, you hear me? People — and cats — are more than looks. Okay?” he asked, as if she could understand. “There’s a soul, and there’s a brain, and there’s a beating heart that deserves to be loved by their own and each heartbeat.”
The cat meowed. Percy took it as a question to continue his mumbling and an affirmative to what he had asked the cat for. He would have to sincerely rethink about how he thought he could understand a cat’s meowing and take it as a question anyway.
“And everything about her is so beautiful, kitty cat. Her eyes, her hair, her skin, her smile,” he sighed, dumbstruck. “I could be dying a gruesome, terrible, nightmarish death and, if she ever was there and just smiled at me, I’d rest in peace. I wish I could have her smiling at me forever. Every day. And her laughter— can you recognize her laughter, kitty cat?” he laughed, just because it was the obvious thing to do. Just the clear outcome to remembering. “The most melodious thing I ever heard. I’d make an absolute idiot of myself — not like it’s a challenge, really — for the rest of my life if I got to hear her laughing.”
Percy combed through his hair with his fingers in a hurry, trying to gather what to say. Trying to gather his feelings, his thoughts, every pretty word he knew existed in the English language so he could describe just the perfection, the divinity, the ethereal part of everything dancing inside his chest.
He didn’t know. What to say, what to tell her, what to think about the feelings that made his days so much better, and probably wouldn’t ever see the light of the day again.
“Ah, kitty cat. I’m a lost cause,” he shook his head, his shoulders slumping as if in defeat. “Loving her is so easy. But you must know that. More than anyone else. Such a loyal companion, lovely, you are,” he said, then sighed as he looked out the window again after stealing a glance at the feline. “If only all those men knew that loving her is much, much easier than trying to trap a wise cat,” he laughed, whole-heartedly and a bit broken-hearted, too.
The cat tilted her head and stepped carefully forward just about an inch. She stalled, then, and watched him curiously as a lazy, lovestruck smile took over his lips. He seemed to be used to it, in the end — to the feeling that made his face melt into that gentleness, the absolute awe that was to be in love with someone.
With Annabeth, of all people born and raised in this world. Out of everyone who could have crossed his path, or had a yellow cat, or lived just next doors.
“I’m fortunate to be the one to know that, though. To know how easy it is to love her. Her eyes, her voice, her laughter, her face, her jokes, her— her everything. The way she lights up when talking about architecture and history, how her voice changes when she’s saying something that should be a secret, even though we’re the only ones in the room. How she flaps her hands when her words can’t properly convey her excitement. How she holds herself like royalty and treats others with the gentleness and mercifulness of the very best of human beings. The way she moves, and how her gaze is as soft as her touch whenever she’s comfortable in the room,” he listed, and he was sure he sounded like the most drunken of poets to ever try and convey their love’s entirety. A foolish job, for there was nothing that could possibly match their greatness.
And Percy was more than comfortable with that — with never being able to put something like that feeling into words, into syllables and adjectives. The words could all waltz around his head, and still he wouldn’t be able to pick them all and tale it into the truthfulness of what it was to be alive and live through the falling he had gotten himself into for Annabeth Chase.
The cat, then, leaped from where she stood on the bookshelf, and graciously made her way towards the man at the table. His eyes watched the animal carefully, and a crease grew between his eyebrows — she seemed determined, and not once seem to doubt whatever it was that she was doing.
Percy held his breath, unsure as to why. He had hoped for the cat to suddenly start running and make her merry way out of his house, never to be seen again in his property in fear of him snatching the necklace from her and claiming her mistress as a prize. He hoped for her to perhaps jump on the table and scratch his face out of revolt — a ‘how dare you fall for her after everything?’ type of gesture —, or maybe completely ignore him and go lie down beside Ms. O’Leary by the couch.
What Percy couldn’t have expected was for kitty cat to leap over on the table, right in front of him, and stretch her neck towards him in an invitation. An offer.
She was offering him the key.
The hand he had raised to pet her suddenly fell to the side of his body, and he moved as far as he could from her without moving the chair he sat on. Her posture and gesture seemed to have struck him with lightning or terrified him like a ghost all the same — the look on his face was spooked, and he did not know how to react.
Or rather, he knew. He just wasn’t quite sure that the feline would understand his ranting and reasons.
“No,” he said.
The cat turned her neck to look at him, seemingly confused. Percy shook his head again.
“I’m not taking the key, kitty cat,” he said as the cat stretched her neck again. Her grey eyes seemed to ask the reason behind his words, and Percy obliged. Being this far in their little companionship, it’d be odd for him to not believe his instincts on what he reads on her eyes. “I promised then, and I’m keeping my promise now. I meant it when I said that I dislike how this whole thing goes. Annabeth isn’t a prize. She isn’t just the consequence, the outcome of a plan, a scheme that results in taking something from someone,” Percy continued, his hand reaching out to scratch the feline’s chin, never once his fingers touching the chain around her neck. She closed her eyes for a second. “Her love should be earned. Deserved. Cherished, just as much as she should be.”
The cat’s grey eyes met his blue ones again, then, and for once, he couldn’t quite place an expression, a feeling, to her irises and movements. After so long, he had gotten used to interpreting her — he had become quite good at that, it seemed — and it was odd, to say the least, that he couldn’t decipher, or pretend to do so, whatever it was his lovely friend was feeling.
So, he decided to give her another reason. Because he had one, and because he could, and because she was Annabeth’s cat — and she was all in for logics and reasons and whys.
“Besides, kitty cat, I couldn’t take the key, whether I had made a promise to you or not,” he explained. The cat stared at him, still expressionless. “You must agree with me on this, lovely. It would look a lot like a Machiavellian plan to take it now. Because you trust me. Because she trusts me. Because I am, apparently, the only one who isn’t on this wild chase for her cat and the key,” he reasoned.
The cat turned her head away, and he thought it looked a lot like what Annabeth did when she couldn’t quite find another argument to refute one of his wildest thoughts. Amusing, indeed. It made him fall for the woman one more time — the thousandth just that day, apparently, and he hadn’t even seen her.
He sighed. His hand fell to the table, and his voice sounded as broken as his heart felt. And there was no one to blame, in the end.
“Ah, kitty cat,” he said, his tone sad and hopeless. “Had I known of all the madness before, I’d make sure I was the only one on the chase for her heart. Had I not known, I could try something,” he lamented. The smile on his face was bittersweetly real. “Forever, kitty cat. That’s the kind of feeling. That’s how one gets to feel what it is to be eternal.”
And forever, now he realized, wasn’t a way to track time — a feeling, it turned out, it was all that it was. To be so vehemently in love, so deeply touched by someone else’s presence and existence that time and space couldn’t begin to explain everything it meant to have the honor to be and feel in the same planet, the same universe, the same existential plan as such a beautiful, beautiful soul.
Forever, he realized, was something he was bound to feel, something he had been made for from the moment he had been born, so many summers before. He was always bound to know what ethereal, what eternal meant — he had always been fated to feelings so much bigger than the ones he would be able to ever describe.
Fated to her, he’d like to think. To meet, befriend, and fall hopelessly in love with her.
Percy blinked, getting his vision into focus one more time. The cat seemed to be staring out the window, watching life go by. Perhaps waiting for him to tell her to go away, to say something.
“Promise me something?” he asked, suddenly, and the cat’s attentive eyes were on his again. “That you’ll do everything you can to make sure that whoever takes the key is capable of offering the love she deserves. A selfless, undying, forever love.”
The cat seemed to look at the table for a second, avoiding his eyes. It was a ridiculous thing, to ask for a feline to make promises, let alone such an important one — even if she seemed to understand every single word he said, it was still a cat; still a little creature with little to no knowledge of the hardships and heartbreaks of the human soul.
But, for some reason, Percy needed the cat to promise him. Or at least, he needed to see something that’d convince his brain that she had promised it.
“Promise me, kitty cat?” he asked again, his voice sounding a lot like a plea. In other circumstances, he would avoid sounding so desperate, so heartbroken — but in her and her mistress’ presences, he had learned that it was safe to be vulnerable, that it wouldn’t kill him. Though, he thought, this one thing just might.
The cat stared at him for a long while, unblinking, until the moment she moved forward, close to his face. Then, carefully and delicately, she approached him just enough to lick his cheek, then stepping back and meowing loudly.
Percy was still blinking in surprise when she hopped off the table, looking behind only once before sprinting towards her mistress’ garden.
He sighed, then.
It was enough of a promise for him.
The next time kitty cat showed up, she had been gone for a few days. Percy wondered, and concluded that, perhaps, she now felt the need to be careful around him, as well, knowing of his feelings. Despite the promises he’d made and kept, it was a human thing to understand it completely — and, if she did, she was too smart of a being to just slack on the security she’d built for herself and the key on her neck.
For the past few days, he had reminisced and basked on the feeling that had taken over his seconds and minutes and senses every moment of the day. He hadn’t seen Annabeth either — an odd similarity her and her cat had, sometimes, to avoid everything and everyone together — and it gave him time to wonder what to do with everything storming inside his chest, if he ever wanted to do anything with it at all.
He had been trying to read the same page of a random book for the best part of an hour, the next time someone meowed behind him. Percy snapped his head in the direction of the sound enough for something in his neck to burn in ache, searching for the yellow figure that stood shyly by his door.
He smiled, happy to see that the cat hadn’t given up showing herself in his house, and glad to know that she was well. Percy got up, ready to greet his furry friend, when something different stopped him entirely.
The cat stood by the sliding door, sheepishly staring at him. Her fur gleamed under the last rays of sunlight, and her grey eyes seemed burned to his face. At first, Percy wondered what it was that made him stop, and what was it that his brain was finding it odd about the lovely creature a few steps from him.
Then, it clicked, and his heart fell to the pit of his stomach.
There wasn’t a key hanging from a chain on her neck.
The cat was there, graceful and sweet as ever, and there wasn’t the golden key wiggling from her neck.
The realization seemed to struck him like lightning.
“Oh,” he babbled, his voice watery as his eyes filled with salty tears. They had never resembled the ocean more than right then — with depths of pain and waves of hurt crashing onto his heart. Percy wished he would drown, precipitously. “Someone was lucky enough, then.”
His smile fell, and he couldn’t keep the tears inside his eyes.
“Good,” he said. “That’s— that’s good,” he choked, and the cat seemed to step tentatively forward. Percy stepped back. “I— I trust your judgment, kitty cat, I—” he tried to smile. Tried, it should be highlighted.
His hands were shaking, and Percy didn’t think he could possibly help it. He could feel his heart shattering inside of his chest, and he was pretty sure her soul was being ripped into pieces of cloth as he processed the scene in front of him completely.
There wasn’t a key. The game was over.
Someone else had gotten to hold her heart.
“My apologies, kitty cat,” he cried, suddenly falling apart much like his heart felt like doing inside him. “I— excuse me,” Percy mumbled, hurried footsteps leaving the living room.
The cat moved, then stopped on her tracks. With one last look to where he had vanished to and a door had clicked lowly, and from where she could hear muffled sobs, she turned away.
And left the house under the watchful eyes of Ms. O’Leary.
The days seemed to drag by after he had cried his soul out in the quiet of his bedroom, many moons before, when kitty cat had last showed up without a key attached to the golden chain on her neck. Percy didn’t know how many days had passed, or how long of the following ones he spent staring at walls or tables or bowls.
There was a dilacerating pain taking over his breaths and heartbeats whenever he thought about it. About Annabeth, and kitty cat, and whatever bastard had been smart and lucky enough to have caught the feline and the key on her neck.
And he knew that it wasn’t healthy. He knew that living through fog and mist wasn’t something good or even remotely less bad to do — but there wasn’t much he could possibly do, in the end, because dealing with heartbreak had been a riddle and a form of torture for as long as humans had known how to describe emotional pain. Or physical. It felt a lot — too much — like his heart was physically broken.
The days seemed to go by slowly, each hour stretching so he would have more time to suffer and dwell on everything that could have been. Percy’s thoughts were only filled with brown eyes and golden keys, and he wished, more than anything, that the cat would show up again with her damned necklace brushing against her fur.
It didn’t happen, though — he hadn’t seen her for days. Not her, and even less of Annabeth, who he wondered if was doing alright after having her heart stolen by someone she probably didn’t know. Percy hoped it was someone good. Someone kind. Someone that would know just how much of an honor it’d be to love a woman as brilliant and fantastic as Annabeth Chase.
But that was all he had left to do, in the end; wish, and live through daydreams and wishful thinking. He could hope, despite his head screaming and begging him to stop it, and he could always pray for something up higher to bless the life of the woman who had stolen his best, his worse, and everything in between.
Percy hoped she’d keep it. It would be forever hers, anyway.
On that particular afternoon — he had stopped counting the days from the moment each tick of the clock seemed to chip away another piece of his heart — Percy had decided he would try to get some of his soul back together. Surely, and he was aware, the part that was painted and owned by Annabeth would forever be teared apart, but he could try and make sure that her presence in his life had had an everlasting effect.
It had, in so many more ways than only one. At least one thing, though, he would try to reach with physical hands, other than the metaphorical ways she had saved his existence.
So, on that specific afternoon, Percy had found himself tending to his garden with more effort he had placed in it in a long while. His clothes were dirty with soil and grass, and his hair was dripping thanks to the hose he didn’t know was aimed to his face when he had turned the water on, and he had his sleeves up to his elbows as he replaced the flowers he had just taken away.
He had chosen to take most of the flowers he could possibly manage to see in an arrangement together, knowing just how much it had the chance to take a smile off of her. Quite sincerely, he had the slight impression that anything related to him coming to her would bring out a smile — but, out of the very few things he knew about in life, Sally Jackson’s love for colorful bouquets was something he could never doubt.
He was terrified, and had been from the moment he had decided he would look for her again. Out of everyone he could’ve thought about breaking the news — hey, I’m still alive! And I live in New York again —, his mother sounded like the obvious answer. The safest, perhaps, because the world would always be safer in his mother’s arms, but also the most terrifying one.
She hadn’t seen him in more than a decade. He hadn’t seen her in more than a decade. Her love was undying, and Percy wouldn’t ever dare to doubt it — but was it unchanging? Could it ever be, after so long had passed?
So, he had chosen to begin the conversation with a greeting, and also something beautiful. A bouquet of the flowers he’d tended to and grown himself, all wrapped by his own inexperienced, but very eager, hands. If she didn’t forgive him, then Percy hoped she’d at least take the flowers to have something good that came from him.
Ms. O’Leary seemed the happiest as she made a mess of herself in the mud. She barked and leaped, and Percy laughed at how she would attempt to nudge him to play with her, which would leave his clothes and face dirty and wet, as well. It was sweet, though, and for a few hours he was even capable of completely ignoring the closed fence that led to the backyard of the woman he loved so deeply. For a few hours, it didn’t matter. For a few hours, he was just some guy living his life in his house, not even knowing about the woman next door.
When he’d taken the flowers inside as the sun prepared to hide over the horizon, it struck him like lightning, again, all the memories of her that he held in his brain and tried to lock away from his poor, bleeding heart. The weakening rays of sunlight casted a warm glow into his living room, the flowers and the place seeming to be bathed into the heat and the gentleness that he had only ever found in one other place in the world.
The beautiful brown eyes of someone he didn’t even notice entering his soul and residing there rent free.
Percy sighed, shaking his head and doing his best to ignore the pressure behind his eyes. Instead of reminiscing, he chose to change his clothes, wash away the dirt from himself — because Ms. O’Leary would be another, much bigger problem to be dealt with later — and start on the making of the bouquet.
Sitting at his dinner table, he stared at the plants and the flowers he knew were too much. He wouldn’t use all — most — of them, but he wanted to have options on how to arrange everything. How does one apologize for years of being a ghost in someone else's life? How does a son tell his mother he had never done anything crueler than breaking her heart, but he wanted one more chance to live there again?
Percy didn’t know, and he was scared of not finding out. He was scared of many, many things, and the biggest one of them was to be left alone. To be forgotten. To find out he was someone as unloved as he felt unlovable.
And, God, how much he wished those thoughts wouldn’t creep up on him on every not-given opportunity they had. He was fine — he had been the best of himself compared to those last days, and he wanted the chance to bask in it. To do something other than sulking and reminiscing and wondering why he couldn’t be the one to live those happy endings his mother read him about, to do something good, something nice.
But then, as he sighed and shook his head, sitting at the table and taking around every flower and plant, it struck him again the latest tragedy he had played the leading role on with majestic performance — the beaded necklace she had gifted him with rested inside the seashell where he kept his keys, and it seemed to stare right at him.
Keys, he laughed. He didn’t even know where he’d put those. Quite a talent, it seemed, to lose them.
Percy took one flower in his hands and wondered how long everything would be a painful reminder of what was nearly his, had he been a bit more selfish, a little smarter, a tad luckier with life and love. His fingers traced the petals — a daisy, he realized — and he fought the urge to play that stupid ‘loves me, loves me not’ game just to feel the stinging irony of whatever answer he’d get. He wouldn’t hurt the flower any more. He could go by without childish games that would definitely work against him.
He sighed and looked up at the place the cat had last been when he had confessed his love for Annabeth — the top of the bookshelf, where the small owl figurine still rested and watched over the living room. Nothing else was changed, for he hadn’t had the strength or the willingness to move anything around the house that weren’t his limbs, and the admission that everything was different anyway was the last thing he wanted to think about.
It raced in circles inside his head.
Percy wondered how things would be now if he had taken the chain when kitty cat had all but offered it to him. He could be happy, perhaps, or things could’ve gone even worse with their trust broken and Annabeth resenting him for the rest of their lives — that they wouldn’t be spending together exactly because that was a situation, much like the one that resulted in his misery, he would never endorse.
Maybe misery would’ve followed him anyway. Maybe he was the one guy in the plays that was never meant for a happy ending — a comic relief, the so-tragic-it’s-hilarious kind of storyline.
Maybe he wasn’t made for something other than the loneliness he had grown so accustomed to.
Not even his feline friend came by, anymore, and Percy would only use the information to add salt to the wound. He was already miserable, tired, and sad, and while feeling sorry for himself wouldn’t help him out of the bottom of the well, at least it was something he could do with excellency, the self-pitying.
He’d take it.
And Percy hoped, because it was everything he seemed to able to do, lately, that things would work out and be bright for Annabeth, at least. Despite his misery and the chaos inside his head and heart, Percy wished, more than anything, that kitty cat had been able to keep her promise, beyond the odds and the unsteadiness of his request.
He twisted the flower between his fingers, a sudden wave of exhaustion hitting his body like a car crashing onto his chest. It was usual, considering his less than flattering thoughts and daydreams, but it didn’t bother him any less. Percy sighed, letting go of the flower and placing his elbows over the table.
He sunk his head in between his arms, fingers running through his curls and then meeting at the back of his neck. He groaned, wanting to scream. To disappear. To cause absolute havoc in the world and have the skies falling down over every single mistake he had ever made in his—
“She can’t, you know,” a voice came from behind his back, and Percy snapped his head in her direction, heart pounding as it always did whenever she was present within ten meters of himself. The chair screeched against the floor and he more heard than felt a few of his vertebrae crack with the speed of the movement.
God, he was really aging. What a terrible thing to realize.
But there Annabeth stood, graceful and beautiful, with her hands behind her back and a soft gaze washing over him. Percy was, yet again, left breathless, speechless, completely surrendered under her eyes and smile and existence. Then, confused — the words she spoke didn’t make much sense. Nothing did, lately, if he would be quite honest; but those made even less so.
“Make sure my heart is safe,” Annabeth seemed to read it in his eyes, the question, and explained calmly.
Percy frowned. He ignored the way his heart broke one more time at the sight of her, at the reminder of the chainless cat he had met in those uncharted days before, and chose to focus on the fact that she was there, and she was smiling, and she looked a lot like an angel with the golden beams framing her figure.
“What?” he asked, wondering how Annabeth would know of that particular conversation he had had with the yellow cat. “Who? What?” Percy babbled, because he was often incoherent when in her presence. He didn’t think he would ever not be.
“Kitty cat,” Annabeth offered, a sweet, small smile on her shiny lips. “She can’t make sure my heart is safe, anymore,” the woman repeated, and Percy couldn’t quite understand the tranquility of her tone.
To some extent, it made sense for her to be that calm — Annabeth wasn’t someone to step back from a promise, much less from a challenge. Her words stung deep in his soul regardless, because, yes, it also made sense; the key had been taken, and there was nothing left for the cat or her mistress to do but act by their word and deal.
Percy felt something else shattering inside him — the last beating shards of his heart, perhaps — as he came, yet again, to the very same conclusion that the game had ended, after all. One he’d never taken part in, which he didn’t regret, and one he could have never won, much to his demise.
He wished he’d met her under other circumstances, because Percy was unequivocally certain he would fall in love with her over and over, and yet over again. He was quite sure it was happening right then, while he looked at her, despite the pain coursing through his veins.
But there wasn’t much he was capable of comprehending as she stared at him with kind eyes and a soft smile. His brain seemed to have been fried and then thrown into an ice bucket, and Percy wanted to ask what she meant. He wanted to ask how she was, how had her day been, who was the bastard that had taken the key and snatched his dream away from him before it could have ever been his. He wanted to know what she was doing there, why hadn’t she shown up before, how kitty cat was.
Percy was tired, confused, and wanted someone to give him a straightforward answer for once in his life.
“Annabeth?” he spoke, the only thing coming out being the name that had forever been on the tip of his tongue, the one thing he wouldn’t, couldn’t ever forget about. Her name, and how sweet it sounded on his lips.
She smiled. Sweet and honest and beautiful, lighting up her features and making it clear the one thing he hadn’t seen — the unshed tears in her eyes. He wondered why. He wanted to reach out and make sure they didn’t need to be there. He wanted that smile to be printed in his soul and forever registered under his skin.
“Because it’s yours,” she confessed, and Percy couldn’t quite process it. “It’s been yours from the moment you let her into your house and let her steal your blue cookies.”
Silence. Both in the room and inside Percy’s head, where a white noise seemed to take over the war that’d been waged for longer than he could remember. He held his breath as his brain gathered her words. She held her smile as she waited for it to happen.
Suddenly, it clicked inside his head whatever it was his heart was racing about. Percy stared at her, into the so familiar depths of her brown eyes, breathed in a sharp pant.
Because, honestly, it wasn’t the most absurd thing to come to terms with. He’d moved overseas and lost a bit of himself, then come back and hidden the rest of it out of fear; in the meantime, he’d found that he was bigger than he had thought, and that his heart wasn’t all scars and painful muscles too tired of feeling anguished.
He’d befriended a cat, a really smart one, at that, and discovered that there were indescribably beautiful people living in neighborhoods like the one he lived in. He’d learned how to tend to a garden, and all the ways a man could fall and fly and crash and burn and still wake up on the following morning.
It wasn’t the most absurd thing to come to terms with. Quite honestly, it was one of the easiest truths for one to accept.
“You’re a shapeshifter,” Percy said dumbly. Annabeth’s eyes glimmered at his words, and he could bet her cheeks were heating under her ebony skin. “You were kitty cat all along,” he said again, more so his brain could come to terms with the realization.
It made sense; or course, it did. The cleverness of the feline, and how she always seemed to understand beyond what was considered normal for those little creatures. How she always knew where to avoid, and all the ways she was so familiar with him in his house from the very first time they shared dinner and stories. It made sense how comfortable her and Ms. O’Leary were with each other — Ms. O’Leary , he remembered, who had such a bright friendship with both the cat and the mistress effortlessly.
Annabeth was kitty cat all the while, from the moment she had started all that madness and the shameless chase from brainless men for her heart.
Because she was the only one she could ever trust her heart with.
Until Percy.
And wasn’t that such an enormous thing for one desperate, racing heart to get used to?
“You were kind all along,” she said, nodding, taking him out of his wonder. Getting used to his shock, Percy could see the nervousness in her tone, in the short gestures of her unsteady hands. “Kind, patient, and generous. You never once tried to go back on your word. You didn’t change after you met me. You didn’t try to fool me or fool her,” Annabeth stated, just because she needed it to be out in the open. “Not even after— you kept your promise, regardless. She— I offered you the key, and you are so loyal to your word, that—”
“Not to my word,” Percy said, interrupting her. The apologetic look on his face about doing that was dismissed by her kind gaze. “I am not the most incorruptible of men, you see; but I do value friendship and trust. Especially from people — or beings — that had given me no more than sympathy and companionship,”
Annabeth’s smile, albeit sheepish, was bright and genuine. Percy felt his stomach leaping inside his body.
“And you didn’t want to seem Machiavellian,” she remembered.
“Yeah,” he laughed, and scratched the back of his neck. Annabeth fought the urge to place her own hand on his nape or do something as stupid as just jumping his bones. “There’s that, as well.”
He swallowed dryly, now unsure of how to react, or even where to aim to from there. The realization would still take a while to settle with him completely, especially as he would try to remember every single embarrassing thing he had ever done in the presence of the cat; right then, though, Percy found that he was scared.
Because the truth was out — for the both of them. And he didn’t know, he couldn’t dare to hope, what it meant.
It probably showed in his face, his concern and fear, for Annabeth’s delicate features contorted themselves on a frown and with worry. Her eyes were fixed on his, seeming to want to translate every single inch of his face. Percy had never felt more bare in his life.
“Percy?” she called, and Percy’s breath got caught in his throat as he tried to inhale. A beat of silence covered them, and Percy did his best to sound confident, or, at least, less scared when he spoke again.
“You are kitty cat,” he said, just to confirm it again. “So, you already know about my feelings.”
Annabeth’s smile was sweet, and as lovesick as Percy’s own whenever he thought of her — which wasn’t happening right now, because he couldn’t properly think of anything other than how he was losing his cool and his heart seemed to be actively trying to make its way out of his body through his ribs. His lungs weren’t working as they were supposed to, either, and he wondered if he might have any collateral effects from that conversation, should things go well and should he not drop dead in the middle of his living room.
The look on her face had all the answers, and a bigger part of him knew it. It happens, though, that one of the smaller ones was damn resilient, and seemed to glue itself to his brain and thoughts and each of his expectations. Annabeth’s eyes glimmered, shining as brightly as he wished to keep them doing forever, and the softness, the fondness of her features was enough to make a stronger man calm himself down and settle his doubts.
But he wasn’t stronger, and he wasn’t another man. Right then, he was more human than he ever had been — all the more flawed, the more mortal, the weaker, the very more in love. Right then, Percy was simply someone with his heart in his hand and his soul wrapped around his torso, offering everything he had been, was, and could one day become to the most beautiful creature, the most genuine heart and kind-hearted soul he had ever met and would ever meet.
Right then, he was Percy Jackson, a man who’d always been bound to fall in love with Annabeth Chase, the woman next door.
And, of course, he could find it in him to attach himself to the smallest of all parts of himself — the insistent, undying hope that came as a price with humanity. The little thing that makes one’s heart flutter and one’s mind flow into the best-case scenarios, the wishful-thinking that had gotten society to grow and love and believe in anything beyond reason and logic and self-preservation.
He’d gotten used to its voice, at that point, when it came to wondering and wishing and daydreaming about a reality in which Annabeth would be exactly where she was, about to say what the most rational echo inside of him knew she would. But there’s been pain in his past and scars in his present, and Percy had learned to be more than careful when holding on too tightly to the very thing that builds empires and kills emperors.
Percy needed to hear it coming from her — very kissable — lips before he could even give his brain the time to process the happiness he was about to drown in.
And so, with the velvety and the softness he had learned to decipher even behind her most well-thought and resolute words, Annabeth’s voice echoed around the sunlit house, at three-something in the afternoon of a very, very boring day.
“How could I not love you just as much, Percy?” she asked, her brown eyes watery when Percy found the strength in his surprise to look at them, so bright, beautiful and worth-falling-for. “How could I not, when you are no one but yourself? The gentle man who didn’t believe in hearts as prizes; the sweet soul who never once refused to help; the kind person who befriended the creature everyone else tried their best and worse to cage and lock,” Annabeth listed, her voice so sweet it made his eyes sting. “Percy,” she sighed, and it sounded a lot like a prayer. “How does one not fall in love with you?”
He swallowed dryly, his brain working overtime while trying to grasp the reality that had just unfolded right in front of his eyes. The tiny flame of hope at the bottom of his heart suddenly set his soul on fire, the heat coursing through his veins as the realization sank over his future.
Percy couldn’t quite breathe and didn’t even think he would want to. If it was all some sort of suffocation delirium, he’d happily die believing that the most beautiful of outcomes for one’s passion and deepest affections had somehow graced its presence in his life, so empty and filled with doubt and shadows for so long.
For Annabeth was there, standing in his living room, with a key in one hand and his heart happily resting over her other palm. The smile on her face was just as fresh and dazzling as her presence, and Percy knew that the words she had just spoken would forever be carved and burned and sculped in his soul, heart and mind for the duration of his existence over the Earth and the aftermath of being alive.
And while Percy questioned if the point of existence and the reason why the stars and world were something was just so Annabeth Chase could be real and balance the darkness and light in the Universe, she took one step forward. Then another, cautious and just as strategized as every single one of her moves ever since she’d learned the way life worked. Within two seconds and the breath he was still holding it, Annabeth was right in front of him. Looking in his eyes. Smiling.
Percy considered the possibility of being in a coma. Of being dead and somehow deserving the highest place in heaven. Of being so deep in sleep that the world was suddenly right and good and fair.
He decided, yet again, that he would let the world burn down and everything come to ashes if that woman kept smiling at him like that. As if he was just as important. As if the stars also shone for him. As if love and happiness were as pure in his eyes as they were in his heart.
Percy desperately wished she knew they were. And would forever be.
Slowly and softly, Annabeth reached for Percy’s hand, rather numb at his sides. He knew he looked completely stupid — an absolute mess, a complete wreck of a man that didn’t quite believe his eyes and ears and touch — but there was very little he could do to wake up his senses and revive his nerves. Her touch, though, as she took his hand in hers, sent shivers down his spine and torched his thoughts ablaze.
Existence had never been so kind.
“This,” she said, offering him the key by pressing it to his palm. The material was warm from how she held it, but it made him shiver all the same. His eyes studied the trinket. “Is the key to my heart. You don’t need it, you see, for you’ve been in it for a while, now. I don’t know how, or for how long you’ve settled inside my chest — but, if you take this,” she continued, closing his fingers carefully around the delicate thing. “I’d like for you to make it your home. Beside me, again,” she smiled. “But without fences in-between.”
Her offer was slightly hesitant, as if Annabeth, too, feared the reality of the moment between them. The tone of her voice was soft and sweet, and only low enough so Percy could hear — a secret, he realized, but not one like the challenge for her heart. Instead, one they both could cherish and treasure, something made just for the two of them.
Not because it needed to be protected; instead, simply because there wasn’t a soul in the world that would understand the extent of their breaths so close together. There wasn’t a truth over the Earth, under the seas or above the skies that could ever come close to what they shared in secret — there wasn’t a proof, nor a single display of affection that could convey the eternity woven in that moment.
Percy’s eyes were watery when he looked back at her, and his smile, albeit genuine, flickered in his disbelief.
“How is this not a dream?” he asked, whispering and with faltering voice. His lips were trembling, much like his hands. Annabeth’s smile was kind.
“How do you know it is not?” she asked.
Percy scoffed gently.
“My head would hardly be so kind to me,” he said, laughing a little. He meant it as a joke, of course, though Annabeth could see the bare traces of meaningful undertones behind it all. For now, she would allow it to slip through her perceptions. “If it was a dream, though; it would wreck me to ever wake up,” Percy confessed, blurry-eyed and far-too-honest for Annabeth’s heart to take it lightly.
“It is not a dream,” she said. “I promise.”
Percy smiled. Their voices were still low and couldn’t even echo in the afternoon light. Theirs, completely, and as honest as they could manage them to be.
“Promises are dangerous things,” Percy said.
Annabeth’s eyes glimmered in the sunlight. He didn’t think it was related to the sun beams.
“Only if one doesn’t intend to keep them,” she retorted. Her smile was earnest, and a tear slipped down her cheek. With the hand that wasn’t holding the key and on hers, Percy reached to caress the side of her face, whipping it out. An automatic reaction, that one; once he noticed how close they were standing and just how her breath hitched under his touch, his hammering heart seemed to stop.
“And do you?” he asked, his voice even lower as they seemed to approach each other even more. Annabeth was holding her breath, and Percy couldn’t know if he was breathing at all. “Intend to keep your promise, that is?”
Annabeth’s eyes flickered to his lips as he spoke, and he could see when she gulped. He felt the same — the same giddiness, the sudden need to be closer and closer and closer, to breathe her in and crawl under her skin and make a home there; a safe heaven, where nothing in the world would matter but the happiness coursing through their veins.
“I intend to keep a lot more than that,” she said back, and Percy was merely human. A fool, above all, who fell in love with the most beautiful woman to ever grace the surface of the Earth.
And so, right then, he let go of every single thing he had learned and known about chivalry, politeness and gentleness. Something turned into dust inside his soul, only to be reborn with the force of a thousand, a million, everlasting fires burning to the brim of each one of his nerves and cells.
He leaned in and captured her lips with his.
And Percy had been an enthusiast of clichés and happy endings all his life — misery was already real, already present, and he would take upon any offer or opportunity to feel something different, something genuine. Despite his challenges with reading, the words floating around and waltzing over the page, he would try his best to enjoy stories in which the couple ends together, happy and seeing life through rose-colored glasses and under purple skies.
Never once, in all the short while he had been wandering the Earth, he had imagined to be living something out of book pages. The whirlwind of emotions, the speechlessness that comes with the kindest, the strongest of feelings, the soul-traveling, world-shattering, heart-stopping sensation of kissing the person who carries the other part of his soul and all the other pieces of his bruised heart.
Annabeth’s lips were soft, and she smelled so sweet he wanted to savor it forever. With a sharp inhale, Percy tilted his head slightly to the side, adjusting their positions so their lips meet more comfortably — she let go of his hand, which he wrapped around her waist, and placed both of hers on his shoulders.
The kiss wasn’t heated, though Percy couldn’t think it could’ve been more passionate. Annabeth’s fingers traveled to the base of his skull, wrapping themselves on a few of his — very unruly — curls, and Percy took his other hand to the back of her head. He didn’t force her to move, and just wanted to make sure they were standing as close as physically possible. He couldn’t bare the thought of being an atom away from her, anymore.
The butterflies in his stomach felt confused, somewhat violent at the sudden feeling of happiness that came out of nowhere and froze inside his veins. They climbed up their fluttering all the way to Percy’s chest, making his lungs itch and his nerves wake up to every single sensation there was to be felt around him.
As they parted, Percy missed the closeness, but the oxygen was much appreciated to his crying lungs. Annabeth pressed her forehead against his, and he could hear her short, heavy breaths — it sounded like music, like the sign of life in the morning and the coming of the waves to the shore, covering it gently, making it so he could mark his footsteps there forever.
His heart thundered inside his chest, and his soul seemed to glow inside his body. He felt warm, and so indescribably happy it was almost insane, the most absolute madness. Her touch on his nape was kind, and her other hand was soft as it cupped his cheek. Percy tried to get Annabeth even closer to his body, hugging her fiercely.
“You already have my heart,” Percy said, just as low as needed for her to her him, so close they were. “You know that, don’t you?”
She smiled. So genuine, so kind, so beautiful it made him want to pinch himself in disbelief.
“I do,” she said. “But,” she caressed his cheek with a thumb, tracing his face with her eyes. “It is nice to hear you say it again. As Annabeth, this once,” she added, and Percy chuckled.
He waited for her eyes to find his, so earnest and lovely and sincere. He heard her breath itching and made sure his grip on her waist was tight and secure before speaking.
“I love you,” he said, plain and simple and real. His voice was soft, a softness she didn’t think he ever even noticed having to his tone whenever he was talking to her — something just as kind as his eyes, as sweet as the feeling he bore for her, of her, of them.
The words weren’t a surprise, but it made her eyes sting, nonetheless. It was a whole different, new thing to have someone speaking so truthfully, so freely to her about the very thing she’d been faithless about until the moment she’d met him for the first time. The soulful man who carried his heart on his eyes and spoke his mind to the world, regardless of how he’d be seen as for not sharing the same ideas, the same ideals as brainless men who live through nothing more than greed.
Annabeth’s smile was breathless and wide, and the tears made the brown in her eyes look a lot like ichor. Percy wondered, not for the first time, if it had been a heaven-sent blessing to his life — someone as intelligent, kind, beautiful in all indescribable ways of being, living right beside him all along.
“And I, you,” she said, her voice just as honest, just as earnest as his had been. “So much, Percy; it scares me.”
“Enough for you to run?” he asked, his tone not as unsure as he suddenly felt. Fear, most of his life, had never meant good things. Even now, he wondered if it could ever, anyway.
Annabeth shook her head softly.
“Only into your arms,” she replied, so sweetly, snuggling up closer to him. “They’ll be open, won’t they?” she asked.
And Percy wasn’t a religious person. He had faith, perhaps, on people and higher beings that might or might not be looking down over humans, that might or might not hear their prayers and pleas and might or might not be waiting for humanity to be its own downfall. He had faith in kindness and beauty, and he had faith in most people he let into his heart, his life. Not religiously, no — but in the sense that, if there were greater things to achieve, they would. If there were prettier and gentler places to reach, they’d be the ones residing there. If there were things to be done and felt and seen, they could, they would, they must.
He wasn’t religious, and he didn’t believe in good or bad. He knew evil and he knew goodness; he had seen bad and worse and common. He believed in humanity, and in everything that came intertwined in being flawed and lovable and inherently dubious. He had seen pain and beauty and divine — all that came with being real, and true, and alive.
He didn’t believe in sins, and didn’t believe that people, for loving or choosing or feeling would, somehow, be sentenced to spend eternity in suffering and hurt. He didn’t believe in heaven, or hell, or purgatory; he didn’t believe in God, or gods, or nothing.
But then, right then, with Annabeth in his arms and her eyes looking at him as if heaven was a thing and she would walk through hell just to be back in his arms, Percy suddenly, whole-heartedly, believed in love. In all its shapes and sizes and timelessness, in everything that came with giving your heart away and parting your soul in thousands so each one that came into his life left with something of his to their collection of stories. And, so, as suddenly as that, he believed in God, in gods, in nothingness.
Because then, right then, in the middle of his living room while the Sun still danced outside and people were too busy with their own problems and blessings and discoveries, Percy realized that love, that thing that ran through his veins and stared him with wide, brown eyes, was the only thing the divine could never, ever, completely and fully understand. It made sense, somehow, that the gods could be watching over then and not care, and not see, and not hear — because love was a concept, a feeling, a truth they could never, and would never, in the end, grasp in its totality.
It took mortality, he realized; mortality, and the fear of breaking and shattering and crumbling apart for one to give into such strength. It took weakness, and limitations, and numbered days and breaths for one to completely understand something so wide, so pure, so otherworldly. It took humanity, and flaws and heartbeats for one to comprehend that something so timeless could exist, and reside inside someone’s chest, someone’s eyes, someone’s cells.
It took a pair of brown eyes and witty smile and wisdom-shaped laughter.
It took him out of his mind, and into his most mindless humanity.
“They’ll always be,” he said, sincerely, then, basking in the epiphany so real in front of him. “My arms, my doors, my windows — always open, waiting for you to come in,” Percy continued, and Annabeth released an amused breath through her smile. “Not my heart, though,” he told her, his voice now a tad lower, a bit more serious.
Annabeth’s smile was, then, just as amused as the breath before.
“Oh?” she said. “Won’t it?”
Percy shook his head.
“Can I ask why?” she questioned.
He nudged his nose against hers.
“Don’t you know?” he watched her face, eyes now closed as their faces were mere inches apart. “I don’t have the key to it, anymore,” her smile widened. “This very wise cat snatched from out of my hands, and gave it to someone else,” she pressed her lips together, and Percy knew she was tearing up. He couldn’t blame her. He was, too. “And this very wise girl locked herself inside.”
“And you won’t kick her out?” she asked.
He placed a kiss under her eye. She sighed. He placed another over her eyebrow. She chuckled. One to her forehead. A tear slipped down her cheek. He didn’t know whose tear it was.
“I can’t,” he whispered.
“And why not?” her voice was unsteady. He could only hear it because they were so close.
Percy smiled. He’d been honest the whole while they’d been trading confessions and making it known their affections and reasons, but nothing would ever sound as sincere as the words he said next — until he’d tell her he loves her again, that is.
“It’s the very first time it ever felt like home,” he whispered. And she knew, he knew, they knew it meant more than a metaphor, then a poet’s truth, than a witch’s spell. It meant more than New York, than a house next to this very clever girl’s, than a key still pressed to his palm and this woman-shaped love resting in his arms.
He could hear his heart beating inside her chest, through her breaths, in the kiss she stole within the next second.
His heart didn’t complain inside his chest.
Home, it chanted.
Finally there.