Hey. So this is a nice length one shot. A bit darker than I had planned it to be. But you know what, oh well.
I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. That's my disclaimer.
Telling someone you love them is hard. It's harder when the person you love doesn't believe you. But when that's the case, it feels like you need to tell them or else they may never believe you.
And it's hard to watch this person you love go away without reservations. That's why Piper couldn't bear it when Thalia was gone. When she was gone, there was always a hole where Piper's heart had been. Watching Thalia leave with the Hunters every single time they came was downright painful, seeing that Thalia never looked back.
And when Thalia was here, the daughter of Zeus acted like she had never been gone. But she had been, and she took Piper's heart with her. When Thalia was around, Piper wasn't empty. She smiled and laughed, an observation made by Annabeth.
She was a daughter of Aphrodite. She fell in love easily and often realized that love wasn't a real thing later on. Just like her relationship with Jason. Maybe she was a fool. But Thalia didn't seem to mind. Thalia was going to live forever though. And Piper was going to die eventually.
Piper was going to die. That was the thought that drove her to be the pathetic wilting husk that she had become. She was going to die. She could die at any time. She wasn't immortal. It was a basic fact. She was going to die while Thalia lived.
She could forget that though sometimes. During the times that the world seemed to stop, when Thalia ran her hands through her choppy hair and muttered sweet things into her ear. But as Thalia sloppily undressed, kissed, and made everything blur together, Piper never ever once heard the daughter of Zeus say that she loved her.
Perhaps it was an outlet to her, something that didn't really matter. And so Piper would go on, hardly talking to anyone, never laughing, not even when Leo would crack a stupid joke. Maybe she was pathetic. Maybe it was her fault, maybe it was Thalia's. Or maybe she could blame her mother.
Whatever the case, Piper was desperate. She hated that Thalia was never at camp for more than a few days at a time. She hated how Thalia's excuse to come to camp was always Jason, the brother that she though had died, the guy that Piper had tried dating because of fake memories. Memories that took the place of something real that she couldn't get back. Piper was sick.
Sick with fear that one day Thalia would hate her. She was afraid that one day the Hunters would return to camp without Thalia there because she was killed. That was just two things she was afraid of.
Drew terrified her just as much, for it seemed that she was catching onto what Piper was doing and why she always went missing those nights that the Hunters were visiting. Afraid that Drew would follow her And learn of her secret, the secret only she and Thalia knew.
But there were also the times that everything was overwhelming. Remembering all the awful stuff that had happened, the fear she felt when Percy and Annabeth fell into Tartarus. The weakness of not being able to help.
She was weak. She was pathetic. She was useless. Nothing. She was just a girl with an enchanting voice. Stupid. Weak. Incapable. Deceitful. A thief essentially after all the things she had talked people into giving her. Pathetic. Pathetic. Pathetic.
Piper was pathetic, weak, useless, stupid, and incapable of being truthful. And she reminded herself of this whenever she was alone in her cabin, etching the words into her skin with her knife, the knife of that nearly drove her insane. It was because of this that Piper stopped wearing shorts and began wearing jeans and jackets despite the fact that it was mid-July. Thalia hadn't been around for nearly five months.
Piper wanted nothing more than to just sleep with Thalia holding and being sincere while whispering sweet words into her ear, actually telling Piper that she was in love. However the rational side if her told her that this would never happen. Thalia had duties and Piper didn't take priority over those duties, whatever they happened to be.
She stopped fighting back when Drew would call her Dumpster Queen, backed down when Drew challenged her. This reminded her even more of how pathetic she was. And it made her angry. Angry at herself for being so desperately in love. After she ran out of long clothes because they all smelled (and she didn't feel like doing laundry), Piper just stayed in her pyjamas all day long, refusing to leave her bunk.
Leo would come around, trying his hardest to make her smile. Annabeth would try to make her eat, though Piper typically refused to give into her growing hunger. Percy would attempt to read her a story, usually varying between Dr. Seuss and Harry Potter. Jason would try to hold a conversation with her, but she couldn't look at him. He had the same eyes as Thalia, who hadn't been at camp for almost a year.
Chiron insisted that she go to a hospital, and her friends accompanied her there, even though she didn't want to go. Her dad visited her whenever he could. He'd tell her stories she knew by heart. She ignored all of them. Her dad, friends, the doctors, nurses, therapists, psychiatrists. It was concluded that Piper had lost all will to live, which wasn't too far from the truth.
Nightmares began. Ones where Thalia finally saw her, but was holding the hand of someone else, another Hunter that wasn't anorexic. Piper stopped sleeping all together.
"Could I leave my room? Just for a little bit?" The nurse felt it necessary to allow the emaciated girl some freedom. Her voice was so sweet, so soft. It was just like silk. She helped Piper into a wheelchair, excited that Piper was venturing out of her room.
It was true that Piper started to eat again. She did smile when Leo cracked a terrible joke. But it was all forced. Thalia wasn't going to come back for her, she decided. She would talk to her friends. But the happiness she feigned wasn't real. She couldn't do anything stuck in the room though.
She gave her psychiatrists perfect textbook answers to all their questions. They all were impressed, something that convinced Piper that all humans, herself included, were fools. They were all idiots waiting for some stupid miracle to happen. She knew better. There was no such thing as miracles. Perhaps it was all a dream, and she'd wake up at Wilderness School. But she decided that trying to delude herself was pointless because she knew the truth.
The nurse screamed, and doctors rushed in. Tristan McLean was alerted. All that knew her mourned her, except for her stupid half-sister that no one liked. Every person at the funeral was fixated at the coffin that was lowered into the ground.
Not a single one of them noticed a tall girl dressed in all black slip away. She pushed her messy black hair out of her eyes and put two gold drachmas into her pocket. Hunting was what she left a note saying she was doing.
But she merely wandered aimlessly, refusing to use either of her drachmas. And lucky her she met an angry chimera. Not drawing her shield or her spear, she remembered being stuck on an island with no way off of it. Two years until someone saved her, Aphrodite of all the Oympians.
She was too late. Too late to save her princess from herself. And she was too late to leave the kind of obsessed with Artemis cult she was in without a punishment. She was too late to arm herself.
At least Thalia had been smart enough to pack the drachmas early. One for her, and one for Piper, just in case.
So, what you think?