Percy wakes up with a breath too soft to be a gasp and too serene to be a scream.
The breath draws itself out of him, like a hook keeps pulling the inhale up until his lungs can barely take it anymore and he exhales in a soft puff. His heart beats beneath his breastbone, a slow and steady rhythm despite the echoes of memories endlessly haunting him. He lets his head turn to the side, his face pressing against the pillow, and catches sight of Annabeth, deep in the middle of what looks to be a much more peaceful sleep than his.
If he listens closely, he can hear his mother softly snoring in the next room over. He smiles faintly, exhaustedly. For all that it's peaceful and for all that he should be nothing but content, there's a soft, strange sort of bitterness mixed in it all, one that only grows worse with every steady beat of his heart.
It's nights like this that he almost wishes he woke up screaming.
He doesn't really, of course he doesn't. His mom doesn't deserve that--it would probably terrify her to wake up to that--and neither does Annabeth. They're meant to be on vacation, all of them, and waking up to someone screaming isn't exactly conducive to the rest and relaxation they're going for.
He doesn't need to bother them with this. Even as the memories play back on a loop, blood and violence tangled beneath his skin, he's calm. His heart feels hollowed out as it beats, so soft he has to press hard to feel it on the inside of his wrist.
Percy closes his eyes, the deep pain only growing inside his chest, and sighs.
He climbs out of bed, careful not to jostle Annabeth where she lays, and grabs his jacket off the wall hook. He walks near-silently down the dimly-lit hall and quickly slips his shoes on.
He's out the door just a heartbeat later.
---
It's nearing two in the morning by the time Percy finally gets to the shoreline. His pants are torn and fraying from a rather unfortunate meeting with a pissed-off seal; In its defense, he probably wouldn't appreciate it much if someone almost stepped on him while he was sleeping either.
His fingers are ice-cold, the scar wrapping across his left hand stiff and aching. The lamplights lining the walkways flicker, and Percy is guided by the light of the early-morning moon, the midnight sky clear overhead. Does it count as early-morning when it's so late at night? Percy isn't sure.
Percy stumbles through the sand, pulling off his shoes and socks before stepping further down the shore. The water creeps up despite the tide, little waves licking up the shoreline to greet him.
"Hello," he says, voice cracked, stepping closer until they've met, the waves gentle beneath him. The water rocks and lulls, soft and welcoming, and he steps ever closer.
If he weren't so worried about disappearing, pulled out with the tide and undercurrents, he'd probably swim out and sink down to sit beneath the waves, deep under the water. As it is, he settles in just where the waves meet the dry sand, his hands and feet resting in water that barely comes up his ankles.
His shivers are pulled out of him, the cold seeping away even though he's sure the water must be freezing; it's a benefit inherited from his father, he's sure. The aching scar on his hand fades like the waves beneath him are made of nectar instead of water.
It's peaceful, the water soothing like a balm finally covering his burns, and it and the late-night sky above him are almost enough to lull him to sleep right there. The world is soft and peaceful in a way that feels almost unreal. None of it feels real, really; with the cold and the ache gone, he feels like a balloon left to float up into the sky. The whole thing feels like a dream, rooted in reality with the initial bits of anguish upon his waking, but still calm and kind enough to keep him under the waves of sleep.
It all feels like a dream, and Percy isn't sure he wants to wake up.
---
Like all good dreams do, it turns sour soon enough.
Percy doesn't get very long at all to sit, just himself and the waves, before he's interrupted by unexpected company. Fog fills the air around them until he can barely see his own hands in front of his face.
He drags himself upright, just in case; he can imagine it now, a creature drawn toward the scent of his blood and rearing for a fight with a half-blood. Riptide is an ever-present weight in the pocket of his pants, but his arms feel like lead at his side. He's not sure he would even bother to fight something, especially deep in his dream. Fortunately, sparing him the nightmare of being torn apart, it isn't a monster that crawls out of the waves to greet him. It is his father, though, and somehow he thinks that might be worse. Harder to fight off with his sword, at least.
"Percy," Poseidon greets, ever still and cool like the waves beneath them. Percy swears for a moment he can feel the chill of the ocean again, before it flickers back to nothing.
"Dad," Percy says, but it sounds dead and lifeless even to him. Silence grows between them like a weed, but the water rocks back and forth calmly.
"Why have you come?" Poseidon finally asks, like he wasn't the one to come to Percy. Percy came to be with the ocean, not his father, but his dream clearly isn't interested in that reality. "What troubles you, my son?"
What doesn't trouble him, these days? Honestly, if he'd ever exchanged more than terse and awkward words with his father in the waking hours, perhaps he would be more sympathetic to him in his dream.
"If you actually cared about me, you'd already know," Percy says, but he knows it sounds more defeated than derisive. He's too tired to be angry, turmoil buried ever deep under his skin.
The silence grows longer this time, the waves picking up in speed before settling into a calm around him. Percy would worry, but the worst dream-Poseidon can do is kill him, and he's almost certain that would wake him up. He's still not sure he wants that, though.
"I promised you I would be a better father," Poseidon says, his face impossible to read. It's more than a surprise when he admits, "I have not done a very good job at changing, have I?"
And it's that, above all else, that really cements that this is a dream. A confession, an admission of failure from a god. He might laugh, if he had it in him. As it is, he's too tired to feel much of anything at all.
---
There are distant noises somewhere upon the shore, sounds that meld together and almost sound like voices in the distance.
"You seem tired, my son," Poseidon says, and Percy nods. There's no point in disagreeing, not when that permeates even his very sleep, apparently.
"Life is long," Percy says, and his mother's motto of 'you won't be a teenager forever' is becoming more of a saving grace and promise of hope than a call to action with every passing day.
The distant voices somewhere upon the shore have morphed into the outlines of words, short calls shouted for desperately.
"Mortality is difficult," his father agrees after a pause, always taking his time with things. "It is a great trial I doubt we gods would have the strength for."
"I'm tired of being strong," Percy says, almost brokenly. His father's face seems to shutter, almost.
"You will rest," Poseidon says, grabbing his shoulder, a promise in his voice. "You will rest."
Percy doesn't even bother trying to believe him as the shoreline echoes come into focus; Percy tries to remind himself why the voices matter, why anything matters when he's tired, when the ocean is kind beneath his feet.
"Percy!" Annabeth calls out desperately, and Percy briefly thinks about plunging beneath the waves. If his dream-dad is any indication, his dream-girlfriend is probably going to run circles around him. He feels like a dog, ever chasing his own tail, always out of reach. He's running after all the people in his life, trying to keep up, and always just a beat or two behind.
Dream-Annabeth will probably flip his worldview entirely if this is still a good dream, her thoughts always a million miles ahead of his and leaving him reeling. She'll break up with him, and maybe beat him over the head with a rock and kiss him, if it isn't.
Poseidon's hand weighs heavy on his shoulder, holding him in place, keeping him tethered to the edge of the sea.
"Do not forget, my son: they need you. To have you, you must rest," his father says, his voice alarmingly gentle, and the grip on him leaves as Poseidon sinks back into the waves from whence he came. Without his presence, the fog fizzles out, clinging to and beckoned by their god.
"Percy!" Annabeth cries, something bittersweet like fear and relief as she finally catches sight of him, and suddenly he barely has time to wrap his arms around her as she barrels into him at full force, kicking the wind out of his chest.
"What were you thinking?!" she demands, and he imagines if she had a dagger that it would be poised under his chin, or lodged somewhere in his middle.
"What?" he asks, the soft and meaningless dream of it all washing away until he's left with the harsh reality that it's always been.
"I woke up and you were just gone," Annabeth seethes, nothing like the cold and calculated rage he might expect from dream-her. Real Annabeth is warm--boiling, even--and he'd be a moron not to see the fear and concern beside it all. "Your mom was terrified!"
Oh.
Oh no.
He can imagine it now, his mother waking from a drea of her own and hesitantly creaking open the door after softly knocking, only to find his side of the bed empty. She'd have checked the bathrooms first, just to be sure, only to grow more frantic with every minute of her search. She'd have the whole house up and on its head within half an hour, torn sick with the fear that only a demigod's human parent can have.
"I'm sorry," Percy says, gutted like a fish, and Annabeth's arms wrap tightly around him. "I didn't--"
Didn't think.
Didn't notice.
Didn't have it in him to care.
"It's okay," she says when he says nothing more, scarcely more than a whisper. "You're a moron, seaweed brain, but it's okay. You're fine; we're fine."
And there they breathe, air and sea spray filling their lungs, until every breath comes a bit easier than the first. Annabeth holds him, and he holds her, and he only falls apart a few times after realizing what he'd said to Poseidon, what he'd meant.
Eventually, they make it home, and everything is well. It's fine; he's fine, and they're fine.
His mom, does, in fact, ground him for a year. Sitting beside them both, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a steaming mug of tea in his hands, he isn't sure he minds. He says more than he should, admits more than he thought he could, but ignoring a few stray tears on all sides it ends well.
And if Annabeth casually slips him a brochure for a therapist well-versed in demigods and depression, well, who is he to say she's wrong? She's brilliant, he knows she's brilliant, and so he has to concede that she might possibly be right about this.
He keeps in touch with his dad, for the first time in this history of ever, and he starts to only dream while he's asleep.
He rests, grounded for a year and ultimately basking in it; it's just what the doctor, and his father, called for.
And after all, who is he to deny the gods?
---
