The apartment always smelled like something sweet — cinnamon rolls, lemon scones, sea-salt brownies, or whatever new recipe Percy was trying that week. It had become part of their life together, this quiet ritual of sugar and flour and soft music humming in the background. Their home wasn’t perfect, but it was theirs — warm, lived-in, full of the laughter and scars they’d earned.

Percy had taken to baking after the wars. It helped. The measuring, the mixing, the rising — it gave him something steady to hold on to. But even that didn’t silence the old ghosts completely.

Some days, he’d stand at the sink scrubbing his hands raw, again and again. Annabeth would find him there, sleeves pushed up, face tense, hands red.

“Percy,” she’d say gently, coming up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “There’s nothing on them.”

“I know,” he’d whisper. “I know, but…”

She never made him explain. She’d just hold him until the shaking stopped.

Still, their days were full of laughter too. Annabeth, brilliant as ever, ran an architecture firm now. She brought home blueprints and ranted about building codes, and Percy would pretend to follow until she caught him zoning out — again.

“Did you even hear what I said?”

“Absolutely not. I was wondering if Grover would survive in a ‘Fast and Furious’ movie.”

“Gods, not another reference,” she groaned, throwing a pillow at him. “Why are you still like this?”

“You married me.”

“Yeah, and I’m reminded of it every time you quote a movie from the 2000s like it’s a sacred prophecy.”

Grover, whenever he visited, would double over laughing while Annabeth glared and muttered about being surrounded by idiots.

But then there were the soft mornings, when Percy brought her tea while she worked, or the nights they fell asleep tangled together on the couch, some half-watched show playing in the background. The nightmares still came sometimes, for both of them — flashes of war, of blood, of names they could never forget. But they faced them together, every time.

They were happy. Not the perfect, glossy kind. The real kind. The kind built on surviving, and choosing each other, every single day.