honesty and promise me, part 13 [co-written with @darkmagyk] [read on ao3]
It is the longest and shortest month as November becomes December. Her second trimester is in full swing, and she finds herself reduced to sweatpants and leggings until she bites the bullet and buys herself a couple of new pairs of maternity jeans. At least she’d made a habit of stress knitting chunky sweaters for many years.
She spends Thanksgiving at home, after turning down Aunt Natalie’s offer of family Thanksgiving. She’d tried to make her own mashed potatoes and dressing because moms should probably know how to cook, but ended up throwing out both her pots, and ordering in from the open Indian place two blocks away.
Thanksgiving sucks anyway. The pilgrims were murdering colonizers and turkey tastes like napkins.
Somewhere in Oklahoma, Annabeth is sure, Piper just looked up to the sky and smiled, satisfied.
Fuck, she misses her so much.
In the absence of her closest girl friends, she finds that she feels that loneliness more keenly than ever before, especially now. Not that she thinks either of them would be particularly thrilled about the baby--particularly one of them--but at least she could complain to them about the constant peeing and painful boobs and they wouldn’t be too grossed out by it.
Piper would have given her such an amazing pep talk while she waited for her father at the airport. Piper understands having a strained relationship with your dad, and the fragile hope when everyone is trying to do better.
This isn’t even something she can talk to Luke about. He’s been surprisingly open about baby stuff, particularly the material, like buying a crib. But he has no patience for absent fathers. He and Thalia have that in common. And she and Leo don’t talk about feelings.
Annabeth and Dr. Vesta have spent the last two sessions deep diving into this, talking about her history with her mom and her dad and how she can move on with or without them. Boundaries and the baby, and what that means to be the adult child of her parents.
She still feels utterly unprepared. She feels like her dad is going to take one look at her, see the unplanned pregnancy by a guy she isn’t dating, and bolt. Or that he’ll spend all weekend with just her, and then decide he would have rather been at home, with his other family, even if it meant carrying lacrosse equipment.
From across the airport parking lot, she spots him as he comes to a stop in the middle of the flow of people, waving at her and blocking traffic.
She just takes a deep breath, and heads in. “Hi, dad,” she says. His smile is wide, and he opens his arms wide, pulling her in tight.
“It’s so good to see you, dear,” he replies.
Even a few weeks ago she might have pulled away. But now, god, now she just wants to burrow into her dad’s arms, safe from the world.
“I am so glad you’re here.” And she means it.
“I am so glad to be here.”
Then it's the normal airport things, he checks a bag, she calls an Uber because she’s never actually owned a car. And they are off to see the sights and sounds of New York City.
She thinks it's been two years since he was last here. She hopes so, she hopes it was when he visited early into her move, and that he hasn’t returned and she’s refused to see him. But he doesn’t look out the window at the city, his eyes stay on her.
She knows she looks so different from the girl he knew before. She’s down to a nose ring and a couple of extra ear pieces, and her tatts are all hidden under her chunky sweater. She’s had this pair of black Doc Martens since grad school, though if the swelling doesn’t stop, soon she’s going to have to buy another pair. She’s wearing her maternity jeans, a calm, conservative dark wash, under her purple sweater and winter coat. But she feels so different. There is the hair. Shorter than he’s ever seen, mature and severe. And the fullness that is just starting to creep in around her face.
But he doesn’t comment on it. All he says is, “I’m so glad you invited me, dear.”
She wishes she knew what he was thinking.
Or maybe she’d be better off not knowing.
The Uber drops them off at the little diner that Percy took her to once, after a late night concert, swearing up and down that it had the best breakfast in New York that wasn’t made by him or his mom. And while she can’t comment on Mrs. Jackson’s cooking, she does agree that it almost holds a candle to Percy’s homemade croissants, the eggs and waffles nearly up to his levels.
“This is good,” her father says between bites of hash brown. “How did you find this place?”
“We have some stuff for the evening,” she says, not answering him, “so eat up.”
They engage in some typical small talk: she asks him about his research, nodding along as he explains his recent trip to England he’d taken in October in order to get his hands on some RAF letters from 1941. It sounds really interesting, as he lightly sketches the tactics involved and his arguments for the paper he was writing, and how he hoped it might fit into his next book. She had always liked hearing him talk about his work.
When she had been young, in the few years after he and Athena had fallen apart, and before he’d remarried, she had spent a lot of time in his office, building things with legos in the corners and drawing with her crayons. Sometimes he’d read her his work, the history and battles washing over her.
Just the two of them, here, now, reminds her so strongly of that time. Lulling her into a false sense of security
“So,” he wipes his mouth with his napkin. “Now that I’ve bored you to death, what’s been going on with you, dear?”
For a moment, she thinks of telling him, imagining where he is the father he was when she was six years old, squishing spiders and telling her that it was okay that she slipped and fell, not everyone was good at ballet, and that she was probably smarter than the boy in class who had finished his multiplication tables better than her.
But she swallows around the biggest of revelations. “I… might have an upcoming job.”
He perks up. “Oh?”
“One of the lawyers at Luke’s firm is moving her practice to a new building, and she asked if I would be interested in helping renovate it.”
“That’s wonderful!” he beams. “After that Eta award, they’ll all be chomping at the bit to work with you.”
“I… I don’t know about that,” she says. This project is a long ways away, and she doesn’t want to put the cart before the horse. “But I have been polishing up my resume, reaching out to references, and stuff.”
But his smile doesn’t dim. “Please let me know if I can help. I can reach out to people on your behalf, or even look at your resume or…” He pauses, considering. “That is… if you wanted, of course.”
“I’d… really like that.” She takes a sip of water, swallowing down the lump in her throat. “Can I send you a draft of a cover letter?”
“Oh, please!” He nods, enthusiastically. “I’d be happy to. And--and don’t be afraid to reach out and check up on me if it takes a little longer than you’d like.”
Opening lines, all around. “Definitely.”
It feels… really good.
They drop his stuff at his hotel, then make a beeline for the Rockefeller Christmas Tree, and then Saks Fifth Avenue shortly thereafter, walking companionably down the street, their progress slowed to a crawl as he stops at every single window display, fumbling out his phone for a picture, even though she’s told him that it’s better at night, when everything is all lit up.
He doesn’t get any faster by the time they reach Bryant Park for the Christmas markets, insisting on seeing the wares of every single stall, observing all the little wooden statues, every possible iteration of the Empire State Building, and helping himself to as many free samples as he can get away with.
“Got enough food there, dad?”
“I haven’t had stollen in years!” he says with pride, arms laden with fruit bread. “Not since I was doing postdoc research in Stuttgart. This is the real deal! Try some!”
She helps herself to some of the bread.
It’s sweet--very sweet--almost more of a cake than a bread, with little gummy fruit bits that she knows she’ll be picking out of her teeth later.
“What do you think? Do you like it?”
“Mhmm,” she nods, wishing desperately she had some mustard to swallow it down with. Oh dear sweet Jesus some mustard stollen sounds incredible right about now.
In the end, they spend so much time at the market, sipping hot chocolate and eating various candies and pastries and whatnot, that it’s sunset before she knows it, and she has to drag him away from the display of little model airplanes at one of the toy vendors on the outskirts of the park so they can go up to the observation deck at One Vanderbilt.
It’s new--very new, but it’s made such a splash that even Annabeth, disconnected from the architecture world as she is, couldn’t ignore it. A 1400 foot office, restaurant, and public art building, it towers above Midtown, staring down the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and all the other iconic high rises of New York, its glass-encasement making you feel like you’re literally walking on air.
At least, it’s supposed to. All Annabeth can feel is her stomach churning.
“Oh goodness,” Frederick breathes, face pressed up against the glass window. “My goodness. Just look at that view!”
Annabeth is entirely too preoccupied with the floor, the endless reflections of the city below and the people around making her head spin.
Maybe all that stollen was a bad idea.
“I think I can see all the way to Bear Mountain!”
She manages to straighten up, swallowing bile, carefully teetering her way over to the window. Her father still looks out, but she can’t pull her gaze away from down, staring at the city which held her for years: its streets, its bars, its people.
It’s… smaller than she expected, somehow.
She’s seen this height and angle in tons of movies, establishing shots to bring the viewer into the magical universe of New York City, but seeing it for herself, standing as a god above the people of Manhattan--it lessens it, almost. New York isn’t a whole dimension unto itself, it seems. It’s just a place.
Her father sighs. “This is the sort of place your mother would love,” he says, almost to himself.
Annabeth can’t help but stiffen. And of course, this would be the one time he notices.
His fingers curl against the glass. “Have you… seen her lately?”
Annabeth snorts. “If she saw me, she’d have to admit that I’m not in rehab. And we can’t have that.”
And only realizes that was the wrong response when he turns to look at her with a frown, leaving the view below behind completely.
“I don’t know what that means.” He finally says, “I just...didn’t you move to New York to be closer to her?”
“Well, yeah. But that was two years ago.”
When she realizes, her stomach drops in a way which has nothing to do with the stollen or her baby.
Her dad doesn’t know.. He doesn’t know what happened to her.
She’d told him in the early days that she was leaving for independent projects, before she’d stopped answering his texts. But he has no idea what went down between Annabeth Chase and Athena Pallas at a swanky New York City lunch spot two years ago.
Under her father’s kind but piercing gaze, on top of the city, the questions and her history hanging in the air like the snowflakes which have just begun to fall, Annabeth does the only thing she can do: she bursts into tears.
She’s cried about this before. Many many many times, in various states of sobriety. But she’s never cried about it in her father’s arms.
It takes a long, long time for her to get the whole story out. Not because it's that long, but because she can barely finish her sentences without getting lost in her own snot. She tells some of it out of order, the dinner before the expectations, and then only bits and pieces of the aftermath, but eventually, she lays it all out. The dreams she’s been chasing, her own and her mothers, and Athena’s dismissal. The fateful lunch, and her own self destruction. Everything right up to just a few months ago, the Eta Awards on Percy’s birthday, where she found out her mother was so ashamed of having a community architect for a daughter, she told everyone Annabeth was in recovery.
Her dad doesn’t say much, save for a small, sweet, “It’s alright,” while he rubs her back. He doesn’t remove his arms from around her. And when she’s properly done with her story, he doesn’t say anything for a long time.
“Oh Annabeth,” Is how he starts, and she can’t imagine what he’s going to say next.
He’s still rubbing his back. And the silence stretches on as she prepares to face the great confrontation. The one that she’d been dreading for two years, or maybe even twenty. The one where her father, nodding, agreed, saying that her mother was right, that she’d never amount to anything, and that she was a waste of all that time and money. For a thousand conversations for the early days of her father’s marriage, when Mary had had new babies, Annabeth had been an annoying left over, and her dad had been away for work.
She doesn’t want to hear him say he didn’t love her, even if she had wondered and suspected more than a few times over the years. Her dad was the only one who’d ever said that he loved her before. It sounded like he meant it. She didn’t think she could stand to lose it.
That’s why she’d pulled away, she thinks. God, she should be taking notes for her session with Dr. Vesta on Thursday.
"Oh, my poor poor Annabeth,” he murmurs. “I am so, so sorry you've kept this all to yourself for so long."
She shifts her head, trying to get a good look at him, but his arms are already squeezing her tighter and planting a kiss on her temple.
“I can’t believe Athena said that to you.” Her whole life, her father had talked about her mother with a sort of bemused sadness and even some wistfulness. She’d never heard this tone, the anger, the venom on her mother’s name. “I mean, I can, of course I can. I just… oh, Annabeth, I am so sorry.” He pulls back, and he made a point to look her directly in the eyes, something he didn’t always do, “You know she’s wrong, right?”
Does she? Probably, objectively. But…
She shrugs. “I’m working on it.”
The silence hangs between them. He seems shocked that he can’t find any words to say, opting instead to draw her into another hug. A long one.
A really nice one, though.
It feels like ages before he finds the will to speak again. “I’m so sorry you had to go through this alone,” he mumbles. “Had I known, I…”
What could he have done? What would he have done? Would any of it have helped at all? She wishes she could comfort him, lie to him and tell him that he could have made it all go away, that he can go back in time and fix things. But he can’t. There’s no changing what happened.
Maybe she can assuage his worries somewhat, though.
“I wasn’t alone,” she says into his shoulder. “I… had a friend.”
He pulls back, eyes hopeful. “You did?”
She nods. Emphasis on ‘had.’ “Thalia. She kept me from doing anything too drastic.”
Feeling the tears well in her eyes again, she turns back to the window.
She hasn’t thought about Thalia in months, she realizes, somewhat guiltily, having spent all her spare energy crying over Percy. Thalia had held Annabeth together with alcohol, loud music, and a bad attitude that Annabeth had fiercely coveted. Those first few months, she practically idolized her friend, sticking metal in her face and covering her body with ink to mold herself into the shape of the punk princess that Thalia had imagined for her.
However badly she broke Percy’s heart, she must have broken Thalia’s, too.
“I think I remember that name,” her dad says, “from just after you switched to freelancing.”
She wonders if he’s pretending to make her feel better. She doesn’t have any clue if she had mentioned Thalia in the early days.
But she doesn’t want to talk about her anymore. That’s a scar that hurts too deeply right now.
He seems to sense her reticence. “In any case, I’m glad you had someone to help you.”
Annabeth frowns into the mirrored glass.
Thalia… hadn’t helped her all that much, really. She had been a dear friend, a trusted confidant, a lifeline, but she had not been much for healing, much preferring to let it fester instead. Better to let it burn.
She thinks of Zeus Olympianides at Halloween, and her own father now. And she knows she’s in a better place than Thalia.
If nothing else, she has a better dad.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she says.
He embraces her again. “Me, too.”
Good to know that crying is a Chase family trait.
***
Day two, they hit the museums.
They start with the Met, of course, and Annabeth just thanks her lucky stars that her father isn’t into classical antiquities. Still, it’s an amazing place, and they have a wonderful time, before meandering across Central Park to the Museum of Natural History. After a late lunch, Annabeth had suggested checking out the Guggenheim and the Neue Gallerie as well, but her dad doesn’t have much of an eye for modern art, so they compromise on walking around the Park some more.
It’s a beautiful day, cold but bright, clean air crisp with the promise of an evening snow. Making their way down south, they arrive at Wollman Rink, already packed with couples and families, the air full of laughter and cheers and snatches of Christmas carols.
She had been worried that her dad wouldn’t want to go skating, afraid he might think it just a touch too childish.
Boy is she being proven wrong.
“You alright there, dear?” he asks, skating a circle around her as he comes to a stop in front.
Annabeth, never really one for grace, skates with her knees knocked, one arm out for balance as she clutches the barrier. How the fuck is he so good at this? “Hanging in there,” she says through gritted teeth. “Where did you learn to skate?”
“Oh, ages ago,” he says, drifting backwards. “You know I played hockey in high school?”
Her eyes bug out of her head. “No?”
He nods, not even looking where he’s going. Bastard. “I was even on a shortlist for recruitment, I believe. But, well, my teammates were… shall we say, not very academically inclined, and after my last fight, I couldn’t very well write essays with broken fingers, could I?”
Fight? His last fight? As in, last of many?!
And then he skates away, weaving in between the clumps of people on the ice, leaving Annabeth with so, so many questions.
Her skates are a little too tight, and she has serious concerns for the health of her child which obviously vastly outweigh any imagined sense of embarrassment on being so bad at skating, she takes a breather with some hot cocoa, sitting on a bench and watching her father skate around. She’s worked up a bit of a sweat, despite the weather, so her coat sits pooled around her lap.
A little ways down the rink, she sees a little girl, probably three or four years old, her hair up in space buns, giving much the same performance on skates as Annabeth had just a while ago. Arms outstretched, she wobbles towards her father, who kneels on the ice, his arms outstretched, waiting for her to fall into his arms. When she reaches him, he gives a little cheer, picking her up, and spinning with her in a circle, her arms and legs wrapped around his torso, screeching with delight.
Smiling, so enraptured, she barely notices her own father come to sit down next to her, his hands wrapped around his own cup of cocoa. “I like your tattoos,” he says.
She blinks, then looks down. She had completely forgotten--the sweater dress she had picked out today only had short sleeves. “Thanks.”
“I like this one,” he points to a stylized Delta symbol in her inner elbow. “I remember, you used to draw this in all of your notebooks.”
…That she had. “Thank you,” she says, hoping he’ll understand what for.
After skating, they go for dinner on the Upper West Side. A little more expensive than she’s used to, not that either of them can’t afford it, but she had picked it because of its proximity to the Lincoln Arts Performing Center.
She had suggested it, yesterday, shyly, hoping he wouldn’t want to. Or hoping he didn’t even hear her. No dice--the words had barely come out of her mouth before he agreed, almost jumping for joy.
It’s only her father’s excitement now which forces her feet to move from where she’s frozen, stock still on the steps of the theater.
“Everything alright, dear?” he asks, looking back at her.
She doesn’t answer, only flashing him a tight smile as she takes his arm, steering them to the box office.
Maybe this was a bad idea, she thinks to herself as they settle into their seats in the balcony. It’s the same section as last time: close enough to see h--to see the stage, but far enough away to melt into the faceless crowd.
She rebuffs all attempts at pre-show conversation. The last few minutes of orchestral noise consist of Frederick, his head buried in the program, and Annabeth, doing breathing exercises as she crushes hers in her fist.
She can’t read it. She can’t--she can’t even open it.
The orchestra begins to tune, the oboe tone piercing through the muffled roar of the audience, which falls to a breathless, excited hush.
The orchestra begins to play. Curtain rises.
Honestly, she’s impressed with how long it takes before she starts to cry. The Mouse King creeps on stage, his footfalls perfectly soft, back gracefully bent. It could be him. He’s certainly tall enough.
She doesn’t really stop after that point, just manages to keep it quiet.
During intermission, she sits, glued to her chair, fingers tight around the program, and nearly confesses the whole sordid tale when her father asks her what’s wrong. But she isn’t quite ready to ruin his ill-gotten positive regard.
And she still hasn’t seen Percy yet.
She can’t leave before she sees Percy.
She feels like she should marvel a little more as the characters enter the land of sweets. The set and the costumes are beautiful, of course, bright and sparkling, a feast for the eyes. But her eyes remain fixed on Clara. She desperately wishes they’d gone with a dancer with red hair or something. Her blonde curls bounce under the stage lights, her wide eyes shining with wonder.
Annabeth will have to send her little girl to ballet classes. She’ll have to.
She nearly rests her hand on the stomach at the thought, but she stops herself. What if her dad sees?
Gripping her armrests, she swallows around the lump in her throat, and attempts to lose herself in the familiar story. It’s not like Swan Lake. She knows this one. She can follow the plot.
And then the sweets start to dance.
She still hasn’t checked the program. She still doesn’t know who Percy is playing. It makes it harder. Every time someone new comes out to dance, she has to brace herself for him.
He isn’t Chocolate or Coffee or Tea, and by the time Mother Ginger comes out, she’s half convinced herself again that he actually had been the Mouse King, and that she hadn’t recognized him through the mask. Then the children run out from under Mother Ginger’s skirt and she is once again overwhelmed. Her daughter (oh, she hopes it’s a little girl, please) will surely inherit all her father’s talent, and Annabeth doesn’t know if she’d be able to sufficiently support her. God, maybe she’ll turn into one of those terrible moms from Dance Moms. Because really, can she possibly avoid being as bad a mother as Athena?
She has all of the Waltz of the Flowers to think on it.
The only advantage to that is she is already crying when the Cavalier steps out to join the Sugar Plum Fairy.
It does not prevent her from letting out an audible sob.
She shoves her hands to her face, in an attempt to keep quiet, splaying her fingers. She cannot miss this. She refuses to miss the few moments she has left to look at Percy.
She’d been an idiot to think he could have possibly been the Mouse King. She’d have known his thighs anywhere in those tights. It is as terrible a reminder as everything else. Pregnancy is doing terrible things to her libido.
But watching him dance has always been about so much more than that.
Percy Jackson is himself when he dances. In sparkles and the most becoming makeup, he is entirely himself. She’d learned that the very first time she’d seen him perform. Every jump and spin was done not just with his body--and what a body--but with his heart, too. He’d wanted this his whole life; he’d worked himself to the brink for it. Every plie and releve is done with gratitude.
He is a great actor, too, telling a fantastical story with his body alone. But part of that is because he puts so much of himself into his actions. He looks at the Sugar Plum Fairy now with a kind of awe, the reverence of a man who has found a magnificent woman, one who constantly surprises and delights him.
Annabeth has seen that look on his face before. She’d seen it over a sticky table and a couple beers. She’d seen it on a picnic blanket on Long Island. She’d seen it on a park bench on a sunny day. And she’d seen it in soft blue sheets, the night her daughter was made.
Percy looks so taken with his partner, now. So consumed with love.
And why shouldn’t he be?
The Sugar Plum Fairy, balancing herself on toes and ankles and looking as easy about it as you please, is beautiful. There is a technique and artistry there, and Percy, a master himself, can surely pick up things that Annabeth, with all her clumsiness, just can’t.
They are two masters at work in the same glorious craft. Her toes are probably bruised and cracked. She has probably worked just as hard for this as Percy has--possibly even more. She’s the fucking Sugar Plum Fairy. Little girls the world over dream of this part. Even Annabeth, with neither the time nor talent for ballet, had indulged in it a time or two as a six-year-old.
This is what Percy deserves. A once-in-a-million dream.
When they had met, at least, Annabeth had been some sort of fantasy. Punk princess, anarchist architect, devil may care. What’s not to like about a friend with benefits and a tongue ring? And knowing what she knows now about Percy, about his past and all those princesses, she can understand the gutter punk appeal.
But she was never really any of that. She was a fraud. The attitude and persona, sure, but even how unaffected she was by everything about him. He’d shown himself to her, time and time again, and she’d just thrown up mask after mask.
And look at her now: sensible shoes, nice dress before she can’t hide it anymore and has to switch to all maternity clothes, down nearly all of her face piercings. Every day her belly grows, undeniable. Soon there won’t be enough oversized t-shirts and empire-waist dresses to hide it.
She shakes her head to try and clear it, the ends of her horrible, awful, garbage mom hair tickling her ear.
Percy Jackson, father of her child and love of her life, is dancing with one of the most beautiful women in New York. And she is sitting in the audience, watching, with mom hair.
The tears get worse.
Her only consolation is that the ballet is almost over. Then she can put on her Harvard t-shirt, crawl into her own bed, and tell her belly all about the future she saw for her tonight, of Clara and Mother Ginger, and visions of Sugar Plums Dancing in her head.
Her only consolation is that she knows she’ll never tell him.
