Work Text:
She started weaving on the seventh day.
That was five days ago.
It’s been twelve days. It’s been twelve days. It’s been twelve days.
How can it only have been twelve days. And how can they all have given up. Chiron, Beckendorf, even Annabeth herself. How can they all accept that Percy is dead?
It doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t seem possible.
Even though she knew Mount St. Helen’s erupted with him inside of it. Even though she knew she left him there to die. Accepting that, declaring him gone, seemed wrong.
Every pull of the shuttle through the threads felt like another betrayal.
She’d been warned this was going to happen.
Loose a love to worse than death.
And this must be it. Dead Percy was horrible, terrible, heart breaking. But this, a lost Percy, kept that little spark of hope alive within her. And that made every day that the inevitable became more true, hurt more.
She’d learned to do this at age 8, when Candice, one of her older sisters, had not returned from a quest. She’d been one of half a dozen Athena kids to sit at the big loom in the arts and crafts tent and line up the threads, pulling them together to make a funeral shroud.
Percy had no siblings to make him a shroud. Tyson had disappeared with Grover. (And to be them, to live in the world, just a few more days, where Percy was still alive.) The last time this had happened, just before they turned 13, Annabeth’s siblings had made her a beautiful Shroud. And Ares Cabin had made the most disrespectful thing possible. It had almost been funny, at the time. They had lived. They had proved everyone wrong and prevented a war and drawn-out Kronos. What was all that to an old bed sheet with crud drawings. Percy had taken it in pretty good spirits. And other than vague disapproval, Annabeth hadn’t lingered on it. She was too busy being a hero.
But now, it was different.
Now she was alive. Now she was at camp. Now she had lost her best friend, again. The third one in as many years.
Technically speaking the whole of the Athena cabin was making the shroud. But technically speaking their counselor, Annabeth, had made that declaration. And technically speaking, she had drawn a knife earlier that day when someone had tried to pick out the wrong color green for the pattern she was doing in the trident.
After that Malcom had ushered everyone else out and off to something else.
She worked on it alone. The last three nights, Chiron had come out after lights out was called, and forced her back into Cabin 6. She wasn’t sure she was going to let him, tonight. She could take a harpy. She could take all of them.
She looked at her day's work so far, about an inch’s worth of threads. Dozens of pieces of finely spun thread in that little sliver. And then reached the end of it, and began pulling them out, yanking it roughly. The mix of blue and green still wasn’t right.
She had to get it right.
Percy deserved for her to get it right.
“You know that won’t help, Annabeth.”
“Go away, Silena,” She said, “I’m busy.”
“Annabeth,” She tried, “Pulling out the threads won’t make him come back. Not finishing won’t make him come back.”
“I know that,” she snapped, “Of course I know that. I just made a mistake. I have to fix it.”
“It’s been 5 days.” Silena said, “I know you're sad, but putting off his funeral isn’t going to make it any easier.”
“We can’t have a funeral until his shroud is done.” Annabeth countered. She looked at the mix of strings she’d pulled. There was too much blue, she thought. Blue is Percy’s favorite color, was his favorite color. And she wanted to respect that. But that green…the sea green needed to be there too. It was important. “And I’m not done yet.”
“Annabeth, you could have finished it two days ago. Or even in two days, if you’d let your siblings help.”
“They don’t know what they are doing.”
“They’re children of Athena, weaving funeral shrouds comes pretty naturally to all of you.”
“It’s not good enough,” Annabeth said. She wasn’t looking at Silena, she was comparing two pieces of green thread. She wondered if she could dye them, to adjust the color. There was some dye somewhere around here. She can see the perfect green in her mind.
(Could see it, inches away, as she pulled back from her first kiss.)
(How could it have only been twelve days?)
Silena stepped closer, “It doesn’t need to be perfect.”
“Oh, so I’m just supposed to let Clarisse use an old bed sheet and paint Percy’s burnt corpse on it. Is that what you want me to do?” She shot her a glare that was as withering as she could make it. She had owl eyes, it was pretty damn withering.
Silena took a step back and for a second looked almost guilty. As she should. Her empty platitudes meant nothing.
Then she seemed to steel herself and step forward.
Silena laid a hand on Annabeth’s shoulder, and Annabeth shook her off.
“Percy deserves better than that.”
“And you’re doing great work.” Silena said, “It's beautiful, a beautiful tribute. But you can’t spend the next year working on a funeral shroud.”
Penelope had spent 20 years on hers. Penelope’s love had returned from the dead.
“I can if that's how long it takes to be perfect.”
“It doesn’t need to be perfect, kore.”
“I left him to die, so yes, I do owe him a perfect shroud.”
“Oh, Annabeth.” She didn’t shake Silena’s hand off this time.
“I left him there. In a volcano. Full of monsters. Just because he told me too. And now he’s dead. And I’m not. So, all I can do about it is make him a memorial he deserves.”
“I’m sorry, Annabeth. But this is war. You know that. And Percy knows that. It wasn’t your fault. It was his choice.” Silena said, “so you can make his shroud, but don’t you think a better memorial would be seeing the war finished?”
“I’m not sure what that even means without Percy.”
Silena smiled, just a little, “well-“
“There you are.” It was Clarisse, “Drew and Mitchell are freaking out at each other over something called Balenciaga.”
“Oh no,” Silena said, “those were really cute sandals. What happened to them?”
“They started drawing weapons, and their was a fire in the music lesson.”
“No, what happened to the Balenciaga sandals?”
Clarisse looked at her, “I don’t care. Your cabin is fighting, and Chiron wants to you to come and stop it before they break anything too important. I want you to come and stop it because they are bad at it, and I’m bored of watching it and I need to get back to the infirmary.”
Silena looks at Annabeth, like she wants to say something, but won’t. Clarisse looks at Annabeth too. And then at the loom. “That’s good work. Jackson deserves that.”
Annabeth wonder if Clarisse, caught in her own uncertainty, understood. Probably better then Silena, flouncing all over camp with Beckendorf.
And with a nod, she and Silena departed.
Annabeth turned back to her work. Pictured a pair of green eyes. Pictured a wine dark sea beneath a boat, just the two of them. Pictured Penelope, 20 years waiting. 20 years vindicated.
She wasn’t Penelope.
Wine dark sea. Maybe that's what this needed, a little bit of purple. She went back to her options, selecting one fit for a roman emperor. She didn't think about the choice Janus threatened her with. Stupid Romans and their stupid wannabe gods. But she kept the purple thread.
She drove the shuttle in again. In and out. In and out. This line, at least, was the right color.
She snipped the thread.