"No wonder you rise in the middle of the night

to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.

No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted

out of a love poem that you used to know by heart"

~Billy Collins, 'Forgetfulness'

Percy has gotten his memory erased before, put in a place where all he remembers is himself and a girl named Annabeth, who kissed him when he did stupid stuff. Once he had gotten his memories back, there didn't seem to have been any problem. Of course, they were also travelling in a giant boat that could fly, going to the ancient lands to fight Gaia. And then, of course, Percy had fallen into That Place. There wasn't really time to test his memory all that much.

He had thought that the amnesia was behind him, that everything would go back to normal, if that were possible after That Place and Arachne and disappearing for months, plus the fact that a demigod's life was never normal. Okay, so he didn't exactly think it would all go back to normal, but he thought it wouldn't plague them so much, once they had gotten over their PTSD from everything that had happened that summer. And of all the things to torment them, he definitely didn't think his memory would be the worst thing on the list.

The monsters were definitely out for revenge. It scared Percy that they'd always be coming back, but he was in the mortal world now, and very capable of killing the monsters. After having to kill them in He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named (Not Voldemort, this entity was much worse), killing them anywhere else was a piece of cake to Percy. Plus, with Annabeth telling him what to do, there was no way Percy could fail. So monsters were not top of his list.

He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named definitely scared him, but as long as Percy stayed where he and Gaia could not get him, Percy felt safe enough. And Annabeth helped him get through everything, get through his fear. He could run from the god and goddess that were older than time.

What he could not run from were his memories. Whenever he told his story to new campers, he could still remember that startling feeling he felt when he woke up, remembering next to nothing. He still felt it, sometimes, waking up in the middle of the night and scrambling to remember what had happened mere hours ago. He couldn't bear to forget a face, and if he once knew something, he was determined to remember it. He even began to hold on to things he learned at school, which really helped with his studies.

People thought it was all right. They thought that it was better that he cared so much to remember and never forget. But Percy knew that he scared those close to him. He scared them when he ran up to them, suddenly, asking them what had happened years ago, just to check that his memory of it was right. When he began to freak out for forgetting one tiny detail that no one had expected him to remember anyway. When he sat up from a nightmare in the middle of the night and thought he had forgotten something important. When he would get out of bed, stare out the window, and try to remember. Annabeth always found him at the armchair right next to the window, looking at the moon. She would curl up beside him, and answer his questions through the night, no matter what.

Annabeth was a blessing to him. She had been part of nearly every single important experience of his life, and if she hadn't, he had told her everything he knew. That, added to the thousands of baby stories his mother had told her, Annabeth knew enough of him to write his life story. Instead, she tended to tell it to him. Percy slowly stopped worrying as he realized that if he couldn't remember, she could do it for him. If he forgot small little details that he thought were important, she would remember it for him, and tell him when he asked for it.

So forgetting was his biggest worry. Gods and goddesses older than time were next. Monsters third. But little by little, the worries died away, the fears dimmed until they only resided in his memories and in dreams he mostly forgot once he woke up.

Yay, this one was a bit better than the last! :) Sadly, that's about all I can say about it.