Why Hello there readers. How's it going? Who wants to celebrate a random Thursday with me? I've got the best treat for you guys, because I know 9/10 of my readers have commented and asked for a part two of this one shot, which I wrote so long ago that we passed its two year aniversary a week ago. Yes I am just stalling. I wrote most of this, this morning while still waking up. I have no regrets.

In an Alternate Universe 2

"Annabeth?" Percy finally choked out.

"Who else, Seaweed Brain?"

Percy woke up in the infirmary with a splitting headache. His brain seemed to pound against his skull, driving his thoughts away.

"Percy?" His eyes opened slowly blinking fast in the bright light.

"You okay?" The girl with the frizzy hair asked her British accent making the words even harder to understand.

The red head and Harry Potter stood next to her, looking both cornered and confused. Percy frowned, what had happened.

It hit him like a brick hitting Jason.

"Annabeth." Her name came out of his mouth like a breath. It was something natural, something normal, like part of him. The son of Poseidon flung himself bolt upright, looking around wildly, "Annabeth."

"Bloody Hell, mate!" The red head chimed, "Slow down before Madam Promfrey sees you and gets us all kicked out!"

Percy barely even heard him, his chest hurt like he couldn't breathe. Not without her. "Annabeth," he gasped, feeling like he lost her all over again.

She'd been there. He saw her, heard her. That couldn't have been his imagination.

"Percy you need to breathe." The girl with the frizzy hair told him slowly, like he was stupid, "You're that exchange student right? The one from Hufflepuff? I could-"

"Where's Annabeth?" Percy interrupted, "I need to find her! Where is she?"

"Bloody Hell!" The red head exclaimed, "Calm down, mate! She said she'd be right back."

Percy swallowed hard. She'd be right back. Right. Relief swamped him. He closed his eyes, letting it a shaky breath.

She.....She was here. Nearby.

It felt like it had been decades. Millennium since he'd since her. Eons since he stood and watched her silver owl shroud go up in flames so blazing hot he could still feel them against his skin.

"You know her?" Harry Potter asked suddenly, "Annabeth, I mean?"

Percy's eyes snapped open again and he stared at other boy.

"Harry!" Hermione interjected before Percy could answer, "He doesn't have to answer that!"

"Blimely! He passed out in the middle of the library, 'Mione!" Ron exclaimed, "I had to carry him up two flights of stairs!" He turned to Percy, chewing on some type of wizard candy. "Oi, for such a fit looking guy you really do weigh a ton!"

"Uh, sorry?" Percy said.

"That's not a bad thing!" Hermione's face turned a nice red color, "In fact Ronald, You could learn a thing or two from him!"

Percy swallowed a lump in his throat as he watched Ron groaned and Hermione bat him on the head. His chest tightened. He and Annabeth use to be like that. Banter that lead to affection. If Percy thought hard enough about it, he could almost feel her whacking the back of his head, hear that half-irritated half-amused scoff. Percy looked down at his hands, and for a second all he could see was nothing but red blood all over.

Annabeth's red blood. From how she was stabbed....right in front of him...from how he held her tight as she dripped through his fingertips like water he couldn't control. All this time he knew he could have saved her...he had controlled the poisons when he was in Tartarus; he could have forced her blood the clot, to recirculate, to anything other than pool out.

"Are you all right, mate?" Harry Potter asked.

With so many ways to answer that question, Percy merely looked at him. Did he look like he was "all right"? What qualified as "all right" anymore? Nothing had tried to kill him, he was still alive, heart pumping blood, limbs still working, his brain running. By definition that meant he was all right didn't it?

Percy laid back down on the cot groaning miserably in answer. He just wanted to hold her hand again, feel her breath on his cheek, play with her prince curls in the afternoon sun of Camp Half Blood or in the Gardens of Bacchus in New Rome. He wanted to be so perfectly normal it ached with a pain deep in his chest. He'd give up anything to have her  with him, to have her remind him what it was like to smile, godsforbid he actually laugh again. It was agony to just sit there knowing the most beautiful daughter of Athena was dead and that Percy could have saved her. "Son of a Hydra." He moaned.

"Perseus Jackson! Do you talk to your mother with that mouth?"

Percy slammed upright, "Annabeth!"

Suddenly he was looking up into those grey eyes, filtered with so many emotions he could barely breathe. On some level he was aware the Golden Trio was awkwardly shifting behind him, but Percy couldn't bring himself to care.

"Well? Seaweed Brain?" She teased.

"You...you're right." He responded, "I should have gone with "Son of a Hera"."

"Percy!" She laughed. Oh Gods her laugh. It sounded like music, lighting the room with happy sunlight. It reminded Percy of all the times they had sworn, promised, understood, that they were better together, side-by-side. "She already hates the both of us! Don't make it worse!"

"She doesn't hate me!" He countered, "I was her champion! You on the other hand...."

"Hardy har har, Mr. Jackson." Annabeth Chase rolled her eyes and leaned her hands on the cot until they were merely inches apart. She radiated a chill, but if Percy closed his eyes he could pretend it was just the two of them, sitting on the fire escape off his apartment in the winter.

"Are they going to kiss?" Ron whispered, not so quietly behind them, "Can you even kiss a ghost?"

"Ronald!" There was a slapping sound and Percy could only guess that Hermione was doing her job.

But the spell between them was broken. Annabeth's smile dropped, and Percy couldn't find it in himself to keep looking at her. That awful swell of guilt rose in his stomach again pounding like a caged animal in his chest.

"Percy..." She whispered, "It wasn't your fault."

"I know." Lie.

A hollow lie. A lie he had told everyone, his friends, Grover, Chiron, his dad, his mom... They all said the same thing. It wasn't his fault. Now Annabeth in her hostly glory had come to tell him those same four words. They meant nothing. They were nothing. It was blame being shifted around, and everyone admitting they didn't blame him.

Who was stopping Percy from blaming himself?

"You couldn't have saved me." Annabeth said again quieter, as if she could feel her own chill along her skin, "you can't keep blaming yourself for what you couldn't control."

Percy snorted.

"I'm serious."

"As am I!" Percy returned, sharply, hard. He compressed all of his feelings: all the guilt, all the self-loathing, all the misery and pain, all the fustration he had. He compressed it until they formed hateful words that came tumbling out of his mouth. "I was right there, Annabeth! I could have done something. But all I could do was watch you fall to the godsdamn ground with that knife in your body. I could have stopped the bleeding. I should have seen the dagger coming in the first place! I shouldn't have let you die!" His voice rose with every word until it felt like he was losing his mind. "It Should Have Been ME!"

He was breathing hard. Choking on sobs that had exploded in his chest. "It should have been me." He said again.

"Don't-"

"It should have been me." On the ground unmoving, not breathning.

"Percy-"

In the burning shroud at Camp HalfBlood. "It should have been me!"

"Shut Up!" Annabeth yellled, "Why, Percy?! So I can be the one hating myself? So I can be the one who cut myself off from all my friends, my family? So that I had to be the one who lit your green and blue funeral pyre on fire, praying that you would magically show up again with that stupid, stupid grin of yours, and knowing you wouldn't because this time I had the actual body?" She drew away from him crossing her arms as if to hold herself together. "Just Shut Up!"

They were both silent. Actually the entire room was silent, with scarcely a breath between all five of them. The Golden Trio were watching the two of them with wide eyes, puzzeling together the mess that was their relationship. Percy took a sudden breath, like coming up front the frothing ocean for a breath after drowning (not that he could drown. He tried a couple times). He looked at the dome ceiling that careened above them wondering if all the Gods were watching from their thrones, sharing buckets of popcorn and betting on the outcome of their encounter.

"Annabeth," Percy whispered.

Her eyes flicked up at him. She was crying softly.

Percy got up. He stood for a moment, catching his balance. Then he took the two steps until they were right in front of each other. He was taller than her by an inch even with her floating. She didn't back away. Percy brushed off the coldness around her.

"I'm sorry," He said.

"I...I am too." She responded.

"I don't like living without you by my side."

"I feel like I should tell you to move on." Annabeth whispered, even her tears a silver glitter. Even though she felt like ice, a frozen mist Percy couldn't hold on to, he didn't back away. "But I don't want to Percy...I don't want you...to find someone else. I want you to be with me. How selfish is that?"

Percy brought his head forward feeling the chill of her forehead as well. He laced his fingers with hers. Their prefect match. "Sometimes it's okay to be selfish, Annabeth."

"Good." Annabeth lifted her head up kissing him on the chin, which sent a shiver down his spine. Percy smiled sadly.

"You missed." He told her.

She sniffled, but smiled anyway. She pressed forward, her lips finding their way to his, the shimmering breeze of frigid air between them was suddenly inconsequnetial. It was her and him. Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase. It was their souls tied together with a string so knotted that the Fates could break their love with a snip of their scissors. It was so many complicated things that translated into a single blissful kiss and three powerful words.

I love you. I love you I love you. Iloveyou. YouloveI.

And Percy didn't have to say a single syllable. Annabeth already knew.

When they broke apart, Percy could hear Hermione clapping and squealling like a school girl. The boys looked reasonably surprised. Percy thought that mabye he wouldn't mind being in love with a ghost. As long as he got to see her every day.

"You are such a Hufflepuff." Annabeth finally said before reaching forward and fixing his yellow striped tie. "That Fatal Flaw is going to be the death of you."

"There is very little that isn't going to be the death of me these days." He told her, "And besides, even if I do die, I know where someone is waiting for me."

She laughed. "I'm going to have to look up consequences for dating a ghost now aren't I? There's got to be some nasty horrible sickeness that you could get from hanging around ghosts too much."

"We could just ask Nico?" Percy suggested.

She nodded but her eyes already had that far away look in them. Percy smiled. Here was his Annabeth, just the way he liked her.

After a moment her eyes refocused and Annabeth spoke again, "There's something else you should know, Percy."

"Yeah?"

"I'm not the only one."

Percy looked at her, still feeling dazed from their kiss. Not the only one? His brain tried to work through the million different things that could mean but came up mostly empty.

Annabeth squeezed his hand, leaving the feeling of frostbite on him. She bit her lip nervously. Then she opened her mouth-

"Annabeth!" Someone yelled out barging through the doors, "I need you--"

They stopped suddenly. Percy's breath caught.

"Oh Styx." The ghost said.

"Luke?"