νεκρός || Annabeth Chase x Fem!OC

Vol. 2.5-11: Beauty guru time!

TEMPEST

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Annabeth didn't talk to me the rest of the way to the Big House. I couldn't tell if she hated me or not, but she must not have hated me too much since she was still walking with me and she wasn't screaming or anything.

I opened the door to the Big House, ushering Anne in silently. We made our way to the back room, which Chiron had totally cleared out for us to use as our Labyrinth Research Room. I like to call it the Goblin King Lair though, because who wouldn't want to do that? In fact, the first thing I did was tape a picture of Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie on the door so everyone would know what it was.

For the next several hours, Annabeth and I transferred all of our (mostly her) research onto those walls, pinning maps with entrances and possible tunnels to the Labyrinth, marking strange disappearances, marking last known locations for Luke's monster army, tracking the Princess Andromeda, blah blah blah. I felt like I was supposed to be in the captain's quarters of a pirate ship charting the "new world", when really, I was a fifteen-year-old dead girl trying not to freak out every time a really cute blonde's hand brushed against mine.

We had all four walls covered with maps. One had red pins marking entrances and red string marking tunnels we thought existed. Another map had green pins for Luke's terrestrial forces, as well as blue pins charting the Princess Andromeda's course. So far, he seemed to be mindlessly roaming the west coast. On another map, we had purple pins with a few pictures marking strange disappearances, though we eased up in Appalachia, since there's a lot of known caves there and tons of people go missing in that area. We made sure to filter through the people who were known hikers, cavers, or just nature-y people. We made sure to find the weird disappearances that are truly weird. Almost all of them are based around our known entrances to the Labyrinth, as well as the tunnels we thought existed.  The final map was totally blank, since looking at those pins can kind of dizzy you up, and a lot of them and the photos of the missing people take up so much space on the map, you kind of need a totally blank reference. More than once, Annabeth and I had trouble figuring out where certain cities were or we got the states confused with each other, so we referenced the blank map.

It's a mess, I know.

In a filing cabinet, Anne had filtered and labeled all of her known information. She had a whole bunch of stuff regarding the strange disappearances we had tracked. I mean, this girl really knows how to research. She had entire folders on these people, down to their credit reports, which is not supposed to be public information. I knew she probably did some illegal stuff to get that, but I don't really care. She's pretty, so she can do what she wants.

By the time we were done setting everything up, it was four in the morning and we hadn't eaten or drank anything since dinner in the dining pavilion. Anne slumped into a swivel chair, her blonde hair tied up and heavy bags forming under her eyes. I sat on one of the desks, swinging my legs and drooping my hands between my thighs.

Annabeth rested her head on her hand, looking out the small window at the top of the wall. It was dark out, so you could see nothing but the stars and the vague black silhouette of the cabins in the camp. She heaved a sigh, and a single curl of hers fell out of her ponytail. Her eyelids blinked ever so slightly, moving at the rate of a feather falling to the floor, more indication of her exhaustion.

"You need to go to bed," I said, still staring at her. She wasn't looking at me. I wondered if she noticed how much I was looking at her. I don't care if it's creepy. Have you ever seen a painting so beautiful, you just can't stop staring at it? Like the longer you look, the more you find it intriguing. The more you appreciate the work put into it. The longer you stare, you find more and more about the painting that you had never noticed before.