“What are your parameters for loving me?”
Careful to keep her head locked forward, Naomi glances over at her son. Will’s picked-bloody fingernails scrabble at the worn bandage around his wrist, twisting until his knuckles turn white. The car shakes with his violently bouncing leg, out of time with the shuddering engine and rumbling dust roads under the wheels.
“There aren’t any.”
“There have to be — some.” The bandage is longer than she thought, unspooled in his lap. He winds it back up again quickly, hands blurring; darting around his wrist, tapping on his knees, flexing and locking, flexing and locking. “I mean, what if I became a misogynist?”
She snorts. “I think you’re good, honey.”
“No, Mom, what if? Think about it for real. You’d stop loving me, right?”
“I might knock you around a bit, but it’d pretty hard to stop loving you completely,” she teases. She pinches the stubbornly-clinging baby fat of his cheeks between her knuckles, ruffling his hair when he ducks away.
“Seriously, Mama.”
“I dunno, Will. I’d send you to work for your Auntie Di for a while, probably. Reckon she’d straighten you out good.”
“Okay.” He nods, twice to himself, chewing on his lip. The bandage is wrapped around his elbow, now, pulled tight enough that she can hear the groan of his joints. “Okay. What if I killed someone?”
“Be a pretty hefty secret for the two of us.”
“An innocent person. Cold blood, just because I wanted to.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I could, Mom. People are — unpredictable.” He picks at a hole in his shorts until it’s wide enough to slide three fingers through, pulling the bandage in after them. It looks yellowed next to the green of the fabric, worn. “Sometimes you think you know someone but you don’t.”
“I know you.”
She pushes on her turn signal, slowing to a near stop. Will’s twitching fingers unconsciously synch up, cri-tap, cri-tap, cri-tap. The rusted rims groan as her tires amble around the bend, quieting as she lurches forward. They both duck as she hits a pothole, narrowly avoiding the warped ceiling.
“Cold blood, Mama.”
“I’d — it would scare me, I guess.” The next few potholes are smaller — she can avoid them with some manoeuvring. A mouse darts out onto the road, rushing out from the surrounding cornfields, and she slams on the break, thrusting her arm out to the passenger side. Will’s hands come to cup over her forearm as he slams into it, grunting softly. The mouse sprints across the rest of the road, tail swishing behind it, disappearing into the stalks. She settles back into her seat, brushing across Will’s seatbelt as she does, and presses the gas again. “More for you than of you. For what would happen if someone came knocking.”
“You wouldn’t report it?”
“No I wouldn’t report it, Will, Jesus.”
“But I — but I did something evil.”
“This is a hypothetical, baby.”
“And in the hypothetical. You’re —” He scrubs his hand down his face, eyes squeezing shut. “You’re a good person. You have — morals.”
“I’m a person, Will.” The GPS beeps at her — twenty-five miles to the Tennessee border. “And I’m a mother before that.”
“So if I — you would just — just like that? You’d — forgive me?”
“I’d love you,” she corrects.
“But you wouldn’t forgive me.”
She shrugs. “Honestly? I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”
“So how do you know you’d still love me?”
“Because there’s nothing you could do, baby. I mean it.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Not even if I was a bully? Or a landlord? Or if I — liked boys?”
He says it quickly, or tries to, but he stumbles over his words, tripping over the syllables. Naomi sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, biting it hard.
“You would still love me, if I — if I —”
Keeping her movements steady, she removes her boot from the gas. Will glances, fast, at her tightening knuckles on the steering wheel, looking quickly away. She guides the car to the shoulder of the road, pulling into park, and kills the engine, unclipping her seatbelt and turning ninety degrees to face her son. Will crowds into the corner of the seat, hunching in on himself, shoulders tense and curling, hair failing over her lowered head.
“Oh, Will.”
His body shakes as she pulls him into her, hands trembling so bad they spasm, twitching out of the fists he makes. She shifts until both of her arms wrap tightly around her torso, ignoring the burn of the trench, tucking his forehead into her collarbone, dropping her lips to press against his temples, his cheeks, the crown of his head.
“It’s okay, baby.”
“It’s — not. I’m still, I can still —”
“Sh.” His tears drip onto her shirt, her skin. He chokes back a sob and she tightens, reflexively, pulling his whole body even closer to her, somehow, making space for his too-long legs, knees hitting his chest, feet dangling off the seat, gearshift shoved into his thigh. His chest heaves with the effort of keeping his cries locked up in his throat, hidden behind clenched teeth, squeezed shut eyes. His fingers cling onto her shirt, twisting the fabric so hard it warps. Her own fingers clutch desperately at the ridges of his spine, the inside of his elbow; squeezing, holding, bruising. His voice is rough as raw grit and reedy as pond scum, barely above a whisper.
“I like boys, Mama.”
“I heard you.” She rests her forehead on his shoulder, her own breaths shuddering. “I heard you, sweetheart.”
“I like — a boy.”
“Okay.”
“For a long time.”
Her swallow constricts her throat, shoving the air back in her lungs. How long, she cannot bring herself to ask — when was it, exactly, that he decided he could not trust her with this? When did she lose that privilege? Was it when he started protecting her from the pain in his life, or before? When he lost everyone close to him at once, or when he broke down and told her about it? When was she no longer the person he ran to when he was scared, nervous, afraid?
He used to come to her for everything.
“I love you,” she whispers, voice wet as it slides against the lump in her throat. She squeezes him again, and this time, he squeezes back, pressing his face into her skin. “Will Solace, you are what keeps me going, do you understand that? Come up here, baby, look at me.”
His eyes aren’t hers. He takes after his father, really; after his older brother once upon a time. But he speaks like she does and smiles like she does and stands like she does, and when he cries he gets that same look, like the ocean has emptied itself inside of him. She cradles both palms to his wet cheeks, thumbs pressing under his eyes, kissing his forehead, his cheekbones, wiping the tears away.
“Fifteen years long you’ve been the light of my life. I need you to understand that, Will. I have never loved anything like I love you and there will never be anyone who comes even close. There is no hypothetical, no situation, no anything that could change that. There are no parameters. None. You understand me?”
“Everything stops,” he croaks. “Everything has a limit.”
“Not me,” she says firmly. “You ain’t a baby no more, baby, but you’re gonna have to pretend for a moment that I know everything again. I am telling you that there is no boundary. And I am not giving you the option to disagree. You are my son and my sun and that’s final, Will. That’s final.”
His face crumples. She pulls him close again, sighing, letting him curl up in his lap like he’s ten years younger than she should be, instead of the ten years older he acts. She runs a hand through he knotted hair and another down his back and presses her lips to his temples, holding him every place she can reach, and rocks them, even though there’s no room to do it, humming slow and low under her breath.
“We’ll get there,” she promises, tapping a beat on his shoulders, pressing a kiss to his hair. “Okay?”
He nods into her neck. “Okay.” His voice is small but not cowering, thankfully; small like he’s hiding in her instead of from her. She fights the urge to sag into him, to burst into tears of her own.
“I love you, Will. No matter what and forever.”
“I love you too, Mama.”
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One thing which genuinely bothers me is Annabeth's perception in the fandom. How she's seen as this cold, stoic, emotionless, reserved and intimidating girl. When in reality, she's a character full of love.
Annabeth, who immediately cried and felt attached to Cerberus after playing with him for a few minutes because she wouldn't get to play with him again.
Annabeth, whose deepest desire, which the Sirens lured her with, is saving Luke and having a good relationship with both her parents.
Annabeth, who believed in Luke's goodness, even after all the countless terrible things he did simply because she had faith in his humanity.
Annabeth, who cried in Percy's arms before entering the labyrinth and refused to reveal the last line of the prophecy because it said to lose a love worse than death and the idea of losing any of her friends is too painful, heartbreaking and worse than dying.
Annabeth, who kissed Percy before parting with him in St. Helens because if he's going to die, she at least wants him to die knowing she loved him.
Annabeth, who took a poisoned knife for Percy during the war because she'd rather die herself than let him die.
Annabeth, who convinced Luke to switch sides by reminding him of the promise of family he gave her. Which in turn, influenced Luke's decision to end himself to destroy Kronos. Hello, she saved the world with the power of love.
Annabeth, who spent months after months losing sleep and searching desperately for Percy when he went missing.
Annabeth, who kissed Percy to eternity in public at their reunion, not caring what anyone is going to say or think. An asteroid could've hit the earth, and she wouldn't have cared.
Annabeth, who told Percy “I love you” when falling in Tartarus because if she was going to die, she wanted them to be her last words.
Annabeth Chase is a sweetheart, who has always felt things deeply and she's so full of love. And I think it's time we let go of the “cold-hearted annabeth” headcanon because it's not true, that's not her.
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