Might as well try then lol 38 please don't forget me + Luke and Annabeth if you're feeling up to it :)
Luke learns a lot during his years on the run. He learns how to patch wounds, how to weave shelter out of plants in a literal swamp, how to pick the pockets of well-off strangers. He learns that Thalia needs space when being woken up from a nightmare because her battle instincts are too strong, that blood is nearly impossible to get out of clothes without a home to wash them in, that home is a concept more than it is a house. He learns that he really fucking hates his dad.
Annabeth stirs in her sleep. She’s swimming in the only sleeping bag that survived the most recent monster attack, squirming under the weight of Thalia’s dead arm. Luke is on watch for the next several hours, a duty he lets himself get distracted from as Annabeth’s unruly hair gets caught in Thalia’s open mouth. Serves her right for snoring like a foghorn. Luke doesn’t smile much anymore, but the smiles that do escape him come as this one does: despite everything. Their little family is here, despite everything that has tried to divide it.
A small sound comes from the girls’ direction, too small to be from anyone but Annabeth. Unlike Thalia, she’s a quiet sleeper. She does most things quietly except talking, and even then only when she’s sure she’s going to be listened to. Luke knows it’s leftover habit from a lifetime of being a ghost in her own home. His fists clench. What he wouldn’t give to hightail it to Virginia and kick Mr. and Mrs. Chase right in the teeth.
Her eyes flash open, already brimming with tears she was never taught how to handle. She’s a quiet crier too. Only through weeks of coaxing was Luke able to figure out that Annabeth likes to be held when she cries.
He unzips the sleeping bag and lifts Thalia’s arm for Annabeth’s escape, surprised when she barrels into his chest and knocks the air out of him. She’s not the kind of kid to seek comfort like that. She’s never known how.
“Hey, kid,” he whispers. “Bad dream?”
Annabeth nods, and her lungs shudder in that horrible way as she attempts to stifle a sob.
Luke smooths down her hair and rubs the back of her head. “It’s okay. You’re safe. I’ve got you.” He doesn’t know what else to say. Protecting this little girl has fallen to him, but he’s only a child himself.
“It’s okay to cry,” he tells her. Usually Annabeth doesn’t want her tears acknowledged—she’s a stubborn thing—but she exhales like that’s what she needed to hear. It feels good, giving her something she needs. It doesn’t happen often.
She cries, ugly and loud. Thalia doesn’t stir. The girl could sleep through anything when she feels safe enough. Luke rubs Annabeth’s small back until her breathing only hitches occasionally. Eventually she’s able to let go and look at him. He takes a moment to wipe her eyes and nose with his sleeve.
Moonlight shines down sweetly on her, and though Luke doesn’t particularly like or trust Artemis, he’s glad there’s at least one other person looking out for the girls. Annabeth mumbles something to her lap, her hair glowing silver.
Luke leans in. “What was that?” She lost her two front teeth a few weeks back. Sometimes it’s hard to understand her with the lisp.
She fiddles with her sleeves. “Please don’t forget me.”
Sticking fingers in an open would would’ve hurt less. He forces down the pain. “How could we ever forget you, Annabeth? We’re family.”
She shrugs her little shoulder. “Family leaves. They stop listening. They forget.”
She says it in the horribly casual way that little kids say things they don’t understand to be abnormal. This isn’t self-pity—it’s the only idea Annabeth has ever had of family. A mom who leaves. A stepmom who wishes her away. A dad who doesn’t care when she goes.
Watching her says these things offhand, as fact, Luke swears he’s going to be better for her. He would rather take a dagger than hear her cry over family ever again. He’s her family now, and he refuses to fail her.
“Well this family doesn’t,” he says, scooping her hand into both of his. Her fingers are freezing without the warmth of Thalia and the sleeping bag. “This family stays. No matter what. We listen to each other, we protect each other, and we love each other, because no one else is gonna do that for us. You, me, and Thalia. ‘Til the end of the world.”
Annabeth’s eyes widen, sparkling in the moonlight. She extends her pinky toward him, beaming all the while. “’Til the end of the world.”
48 for percabeth! I hope u feel better about the show
Annabeth has known that Percy was going to die from the moment she met him. Four summers. Best case scenario.
Twelve-year-old Annabeth wasn’t particularly concerned about falling in love with the trouble-making son of Poseidon who drooled in his sleep. Freshly sixteen Annabeth sometimes wishes she had opted for the quiet life some children of Athena prefer: strategize, keep your head down, live a comfortable and unremarkable life. She hardly would’ve crossed paths with Percy outside of the occasional class or Capture the Flag. He and Grover could’ve found someone else to be their best friend, or maybe they would’ve bonded as a pair. And Annabeth would have kept her distance from Percy in the name of self-preservation, knowing they would only have four bittersweet summers together at best.
The summer before the Titan War is not the best case scenario. Percy is hardly ever at camp except for quests and Kronos-related meetings. He chooses to spend what they both know is his last of their four measly summers away from Annabeth. Grover is nowhere to be found, Thalia is with the Hunters, Luke is hosting the Titan Lord, and Annabeth feels more like a scared little girl than she has in a long time. At least she isn’t the runaway. That title fell to Percy.
It feels like an insult to Annabeth’s love for Percy to wish they hadn’t met. She is so much better for having loved him. For loving him—present tense. But she says this while he’s still here. His smile may not be directed at her that often, but he still smiles. Sometimes Annabeth can even stomach the jealousy of Rachel being the cause of that smile, because at least someone is giving him joy before this all goes to shit. When it does, maybe Annabeth will understand what it means to wish him away, if only to end the pain of having known and lost a person like Percy Jackson.
The feeling isn’t new. Annabeth’s gut has twisted in previous conversations where someone would bring up high school and college plans. Percy would talk animatedly about getting his license at sixteen, and Annabeth was left with a dry mouth she could not twist into a smile. He would beam at Beckendorf’s plans to attend NYU in the fall and make the older boy promise to swing by Sally’s sometime. Even Beckendorf, who had never heard the full Great Prophecy, could not stop the microexpression of pity.
When Annabeth first heard the prophecy, it was too much for her ten year old mind. There was no face to connect to the doomed fate, no cursed blade to reap the hero’s soul. Sometimes her young brain conjured an image of Thalia, but that was a nightmare of its own. Every night, Annabeth would watch Olympus fall at the hands of someone she hoped never to know.
She still gets those nightmares, only the visuals have improved. Percy is in every single one of them, saving or razing Olympus depending on the night. He never survives. You cannot outrun fate. Annabeth has tried.
Still, she is a daughter of Athena, and Athena always has a plan. When Percy dies, Annabeth will fall to pieces. In a lucky string of events, she might fall alongside him. It’s a war, after all. But she has a sneaking suspicion that she will outlive him. She has a plan for this as well. The shroud they made when he was stranded on Calypso’s island was nice and communal, leagues ahead of the one the Ares cabin shroud that still makes Annabeth’s blood boil. But deep in her soul, Annabeth knows that she alone will make his shroud. Just as she’ll burn it; just as she’ll care for Sally in his stead; just as she will lay blue roses on his headstone every time she’s in the neighborhood; just as she’ll be there for Grover, for Clarisse, for all of camp when he’s gone. She will do it alone. Annabeth held the sky, once. She will shoulder this as well. How much heavier could losing her best friend be than the weight of the world? In her anticipation, they feel the same.
She will build a monument for him, something to last the ages as he was supposed to, as permanent as the love he has given her. It will overlook the gods on Olympus, a reminder of the boy they failed. The boy who was too good for them all. Regardless of how the war goes, this will always be true.
He was never built to last. Nothing good ever can, and he’s been burning the candle at both ends for a while now. He was meant to burn bright, not long.
Annabeth sits in the dark of the Big House rec room, the only quiet space now that camp is in full war preparation. Well, the only quiet space apart from the beach, but Annabeth knows the smell of salt air and the sound of waves will be her undoing. That is another key feature of her plan: never go to the ocean again.
She curls her knees into her chest, feeling every inch the child that she is. But children are not supposed to have plans for their best friend dying. Children are not supposed to have their first kiss out of fear that said best friend will die before their four summers are up.
The door opens, throwing the room into harsh shadows and blinding light.
“Um.” Annabeth can’t see who’s talking, but she’d know his voice anywhere. “Chiron said there was a war council meeting today.”
She raises a hand to block out the light and give her eyes time to adjust. “Yeah, later.” To Annabeth’s horror, her voice is hoarse. Her throat is clogged with tears.
Percy’s sneakers stop shifting in the carpet. “Are, uh... are you okay?”
He sounds hesitant to ask, like he’s expecting vitriol to spew from Annabeth’s mouth. And, in fairness, sometimes it does. But Annabeth doesn’t have vitriol in her right now. The awareness that she does not have many days left with Percy is painfully acute. To spend them angry feels like a waste.
“No, I’m not.” By now her eyes have adjusted to the light, and she looks at him through bleary eyes.
Percy stills when he sees her face, looking ready to bolt. He points to the door. “Do you want me to...?”
Annabeth sniffles. “I don’t want to be alone.”
What breaks her is how quickly he is by her side. For all their faults, it is the one thing she can count on. As long as she lets him, Percy will come to Annabeth when she’s hurting.
She doesn’t tell him how deeply that statement is carved into her, that she is carved from loneliness the same way he is carved from guilt—the pitfalls of pride and loyalty.
A kid carved from loneliness cannot plan to be held the way that Percy holds Annabeth. Such a selfless love was unfathomable as a little girl; how could she ever have accounted for it? He just... holds her. He doesn’t try to talk or look at her face. He’s just there, unwaveringly. It kills Annabeth to know he won’t always be. It hurts to be with him, but it will hurt so much more to be without him.
The dam breaks, and Annabeth sobs into Percy’s shoulder. He’s taller than her now, grown only to be cut down young. Still, he is steadfast, grounded, secure in his roots. The way a towering oak has no reason to fear a chainsaw until the cutting has already begun.
“You’re my best friend,” she tells him, because she’s not sure she’s ever said it and it’s something he deserves to hear. “No matter what, you’re my best friend.”
Percy strokes a gentle hand along the back of Annabeth’s head. “And you’re mine,” he assures her. He doesn’t say you’re my best friend too. Just you’re mine. As if the fact doesn’t haunt her. She is his, irrevocably.
A gentle knock at the door interrupts them. Annabeth recognizes Silena’s quiet footfalls and almost withdraws from Percy, but he makes no move to.
Silena’s voice is soft, not smug like Annabeth expects. “War council in fifteen. Figured I’d give you two a heads up.”
Annabeth meets her eyes over Percy’s shoulder. “Thanks.”
The older girl ducks her head in something resembling shame. “It’s the least I can do.” She leaves.
“How much longer?” Percy asks when the door clicks shut. It isn’t an impatient question. In fact, Annabeth doesn’t know exactly what he’s asking.
She gives an honest answer. “However long we have left.” And the sun begins to set on the fourth summer.
she doesnt have to be a volleyball player to own a pair of the nike pro shorts char 😈 😈 (you may take this as a prompt if you wish and that would be great) it would be so funny if she were just wearing them casually, not thinking anything of it and rowan is just sitting there like "dear god"
HAPPY BIRTHDAY @highqueenofelfhame !!! To the first person to encourage my crazy, wonderful fics and my first tumblr friend, I hope you have a day as marvelous as you (though those are very high standards to reach)! Love you lots, Emilee!
Summary: It’s a fluffy Rowaelin fic inspired by invisible string by Taylor Swift!
Warnings: None that I can think of.
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She was sixteen when she realized Rowan Whitethorn was the prettiest boy she’d ever seen.
Sitting under her favorite weeping willow in the park, Aelin idly flipped through the pages of her book, already hating her decision to take an advanced math course that came with summer work. School wouldn’t start for another month, but she was stuck spending a portion of her days trying to get ahead.
Groaning loudly enough that she startled a bird from the branch above her, she closed the textbook with a snap, leaning against the trunk of the tree and letting her eyes wander. Like always, they skipped right over the grass waving idly in the breeze and landed on the yogurt shop across the narrow alley just in front of her.
Or, more accurately, on the silver-haired boy taking orders at the walk-up window. Rowan had always been cute, but after spending nearly every day staring at him when he couldn’t tell - she’d never been happier that she wore sunglasses big enough to hide her eyes - she realized he was… pretty. From his strong jaw to the muscles stretching the sleeves of his teal t-shirt to the way he carried himself, everything about him just screamed of classical beauty.
so i’m having some thoughts about the azriel chapter. initially i was kind of just like, whatever who cares that was kind of trash, but now i’m actually articulating real Thoughts™️ and where else would i put them but in tumblr dot com
for obvious reasons ACOSF SPOILERS TO FOLLOW
before i start, i really am not invested in any of the ships that have been suggested for azriel. i could see any of them working out. cheers to both ships.
what REALLY is hitting me about that chapter is how it’s kind of... ruined (?)... all the interactions we’ve seen between elain and az in the past. from all the outsider perspectives we’ve seen az has been kind and gentle with elain and defended her and protected her as needed. but if he was doing that for possessive/non-platonic reasons... it makes all that feel a lot less sweet.
azriel is obviously someone who has a lot of unresolved trauma and violence and emotional turmoil, so seeing that soft side of him with elain really made me love him.
anyone else out there feel that way? would be interested to hear other, non-ship biased thoughts on the bonus chapter
I definitely agree that seeing from az’s POV changed the way I was looking at the elriel ship and Az in general. I don’t really ship anyone in particular with Azriel either btw. But the way he was talking about elain like obviously she was meant for him: “3 brothers and 3 sisters but the cauldron gave her away” (something like that) and how we know Rhys doesn’t believe that being mates is the end all be all, but he felt like he had to tell Azriel off by invoking the fact that she is lucien’s mate...those pieces of Az’s POV tell me there is a lot of unresolved trauma he needs to work thru and how he sort of feels left behind while watching his brothers experience what he doesn’t yet have. This kind of cemented in my head that elriel probably won’t be endgame because he seems to see elain as sort of an obligation and definitely more in lust than love.
I hope his is the story that Sarah tells next because I’m really interested in hearing about Az’s history and hopefully working through it.
Winter prompts for IDWTW: snowball fight! Potentially followed by "if you steal the blankets, i am going to put my cold feet on you." and/or "I'm dying, this is the end!" "It's a cold, stop being dramatic."
....and another from you for Chapter 31 😂😂😂 All hail the queen of prompts.
HIIIII I bring you more fluffy prompts (I am not capable of anything else sorry 😂): "it's nice that your voice was the first thing i heard today"//“Shut up and hold me.”//“Is that my sweater?” “You mean OUR sweater?”
You contributed so much to Chapter 28 lol. I think I may have used up all your prompts still in my inbox? Maybe...?
HIIIII I bring you more fluffy prompts (I am not capable of anything else sorry 😂): "it's nice that your voice was the first thing i heard today"//“Shut up and hold me.”//“Is that my sweater?” “You mean OUR sweater?”
You contributed so much to Chapter 28 lol. I think I may have used up all your prompts still in my inbox? Maybe...?
doing it again (psst, @biggest-gaudiest-patronuses @thebootydiaries @thehugwizard @glumshoe @writing-prompt-s @one-time-i-dreamt) hecc your blog theme, reblog this and save lives
Am I crazy, or did everyone just read this excerpt different than me? This isn’t a ~smile~ it’s a warning? — she’s holding his stare and threatening him back? She’s telling Az to fuck right off with his torturers shadows because they both know she’s the scarier one.
“Ace, nothing in this world could make me stop loving you.”
“Don’t wake them yet,” a light voice pulled Aelin from her deep slumber. “They’re so cute when they’re asleep.”
Rhoe scoffed loudly. “Maybe if they’d gone to bed earlier they wouldn’t need to sleep in…”
Aelin could hear Maeve’s chastising voice reprimanding her father. “Don’t be mean, Rhoe. It’s Christmas.”
“I need coffee,” Rhoe’s voice grumbled, trudging back to the kitchen, causing Aelin to finally blink her eyes open. She couldn’t help the grin that appeared on her face when she realized that during their sleep, Rowan had curled himself into her side, his heavy arms flung over her waist, pinning her down on her back. But the best part, the part that she was sure her father had not been a fan of, was Rowan’s face, completely burrowed into her chest, face first, his soft breath coming in warm puffs against her curves. Despite the tufts of silver hair that tickled her nose with each inhale, she couldn’t be happier. She’d expected Rowan to wake first – he was always the early riser of the two of them, but if the weight of his head against her was any indication, he was still deeply asleep.
Aelin lifted her free arm and ran her hands through his soft hair, letting her fingers trail patterns against his scalp, trying to gently rouse him from his sleep. His nose twitched, burrowing even further into her cleavage as he started to wake.
AN: This chapter spans from Chapters 20-22. It’s a 7k feelings bomb. Rowan had… a lot to say. Apology Playlist linked at the bottom. God speed, and thank you all for being on this journey with me.
Rowan was exhausted. He looked around the raucous party and wondered how his life had turned into this.
Only a few months ago, his Saturday nights were occupied by quiet nights in and ice cream sundaes and movie nights and raucous laughter and inside jokes, but now he and Aelin were two ships, passing in the hallways at school, who only saw each other at Lorcan’s Saturday night parties. It was the strangest thing. Though, he guessed that wasn’t the strangest part of his life these days. What was stranger was his newfound free time now that Aelin had decided she needed to explore her junior year without him by her side. His stomach felt sick at the thought.
At the thought of her, Rowan let his gaze trail across the room for the pink hair that stood out in any crowd, but she seemed to be notably absent. Guilt wracked through his stomach as disappointment clouded his thoughts. Most of the reason he let Lyria drag him to these parties was so he could still see his best friend, watching with envy as Lorcan easily wrapped an arm around her shoulders, the way he used to be able to. He was the worst boyfriend in existence. And he knew that the end of his relationship was approaching. He just needed to figure out how and when to do it.
my self esteem is through the roof right now (thank you @vinylpaperclip) i’m just gonna post the whole “australian!annabeth” fic here even though i think its wildly out of character based on the fact that annabeth is absolutely a self-insert for myself but who cares!!!!!
in case it isnt clear footy = football and in this case is referring to the great game of rugby league. i apologise in advance for the ending which is just….a whole lot of cheese. enjoy!
She really did bring a footy jersey all the way with her to England, even though it was going to be seen by exactly zero other people as she watched the game by herself in her room.
But hey, it feels like home, and from the excited text she gets from her brothers in response to the photo she sends them of her in it lets her know that she made them smile, which makes it worth it.
They’re halfway into the first half, Blues up by 2, when her phone dings.
Dumbass: are you around i’m bored
You: watching the footy
you may join me but no talking this is important
Dumbass: if it’s australian football it’s not important
but sure
okay so. i was not expecting to cry. however, when you write “She kisses him with the force of twenty-two years of yearning for someone to see her and love her as she is; she kisses him with the relief of finally finding it.” ARE YOU EXPECTING ME TO BE OKAY??
