Hey guys! long time no write! I thought this up today and felt like sharing it. Hope you like it!
It's been a year now.
A year since she last saw him.
A year filled with pain and regret, a year of feeling and being lost. How do people go on after these, these things happen? Do they truly go on? Or are they always stuck in the past, plastering a dead and empty smile on their faces. That must be it. Because if their pain was anywhere near hers then they would never go on. They say wounds heal with time. She's never quite believed this herself.
She's learned in this past year that every day is worst then the last. She is losing her memory of him. Just the other day she couldn't recall what his voice sounded like and that killed her. It killed her to know that, in time, she could forget all of him. All the memories, his face, all their precious moments, all gone just because Gaia wasn't done with us quite yet.
She is scared, because the campers farther down that don't share Percy's story, who don't even know how important he was. Not just to the war, but how important he was to her. He will be just another name on the wall of remembrance. And that terrifies her.
She felt as though she was failing him. He said to go on, to be brave. She doesn't know if she can, even if wants to anymore. She is lost in her own mind.
The thing is, she doesn't look sad. She almost never cries. Just a few silent tears at the funeral, nothing more. She's numb, unsure if she was even alive anymore. She dies inside a little more each day, but to the passer bys she simply seems blank. No sorrow on her face, but no happiness either. She isn't rolling in self pity, but if she was, would they know? Her once readable face had become a blank sheet of paper, with the fading marks of all former thoughts and emotions.
Her friends notice the differences. She doesn't show up to cabin leader meetings. She never joins in on the activities at camp. She lets her brother lead the Athena cabin now, because she just doesn't care anymore. She doesn't even sit with her siblings. She sits alone at the Poseidon table now. Chiron was hesitant to let her at first, but even he knew that was one of the only ways she wasn't going to snap.
They had only seen this once, when Dionysus told her that she couldn't keep his camp necklace. It wasn't a pretty sight. She glared at him to the point of him flinching as she slowly raised her head from the ground and spit in his face. She then proceeded to punch a tree and Jason, as he and Leo tried in vain to hold her back. She was biting and screaming, hitting everything she could. They finally had to sedate her and when she woke up she nearly repeated the scene, until an Apollo camper gave her Percy's necklace.
They don't know what they should do to her. With Percy on the Argo 2, they had helped each other with the Tartarus flashbacks. But they didn't know how to calm her down when she had one. They sedated her at first but they found what works was to let her leave wherever she was to go to cabin 3. She sleeps their some nights, often trembling and praying for sleep to come quickly.
She never talks to anyone except for Piper, and only of the rare occasion when she seems distracted. If she isn't preoccupied, she remains mute, only saying single words or murmured phrases as she works with those helping her rebuild Olympus.
She doesn't leave her cabin much, only to eat or to go to Olympus to help with reviving the once glorious home of the gods. She buries herself in her weak, often refusing to even eat. She is hollow, and there is nothing they can do about it.
They can't raise him from the dead. They can bring him back and, when asked, that's her only response to the question of what can we do. They can't help her and it kills them inside. Not only has the camp lost its male leader to a giant's blow, but their other leader to the same war.
It's almost worse for her living. In death she could be with him, in life they could live together. But they are no longer able to be attached at the hip while they are on different sides of the veil that is death.
She knows Percy wouldn't want her to go on like this but he is happy she hasn't taken matters into her own hands and ended her broken life. She is stronger than that. But some days she questions, is she? Is she really? A strong demigod would ignore the pain and keep going. She feels weak and helpless and she hates herself more for it.
Her once brave demeanor is replaced with one of depression and pain. She used to smile all the time. Now most people can't even remember what that smile looks like. Just as she unintentionally loses her memories of Percy, they lose memory of what she used to be, what she would be if not for the club that sent Percy to death.
While the leaders don't know what to do with her, she knows that the only thing that will stop this forever is Percy. But that can't happen. She knows it can't and yet every night she prays to every deity in the sky begging, pleading for this all to just be a dream, or to put it better, a night mare. That she'll wake up the next morning and Percy will be there. That he'll be there to joke and laugh, to draw a smile out of her and say something stupid on purpose because he knows it cheered her up. She knows it won't work, but still she prays.
Over time she may heal, mend to some degree. Not fully, but enough to maybe move on. But if she moves on she fears she'll forget more. And so she doesn't try to get better.
There may come a time when she will be somewhat whole again.
But that time seems so far away.
To her,
To Percy,
To the camp,
To the world.
They all know, that time is not now.