"At least you're awake now. Everyone's ready for breakfast." "Well, I can't go to breakfast like this. This is already the second time today that you've made me wet." Percy gave me a smirk. "Not like that. Why do people always have to sexualize everything? Sure, it's great and all, but society has put sex on such a high pedestal, like it's the best thing that ever happened to humanity. That would be penicillin." "Do, you want me to answer, or are you just gonna argue with me anyways" "I'd just argue with you. And you know I'll win." "Ace always wins" Thalia declared from within her tent. We then got dressed, with Thalia taking her job very seriously. "I recently mentioned to Artemis that black rings have now become an asexual symbol and she made sure we got some. And they can do this." She spun the ring on her finger and a thin black wall emerged from it. "Now you two can get changed without seeing each other." It was a bit ridiculous, we'd definitely manage to see each other like that without instantly wanting to bang, but I wasn't complaining. When we were finished, the black shield retreated. "Cool, but how does it work?" I asked. "One of our hunters has a friend who is a descendant of Nyx, and that friend used his powers to give the rings this power, though Artemis herself obviously also helped. If I'm being honest, Artemis is probably among the hardest working deities. Sure, other gods have massive domains, but Percy, when was the last time your dad actually had to do anything, I have a feeling the ocean just does its own thing most of the time. Artemis on the other hand, she has to keep about twenty girls near immortal all the time. Directly influencing how someone ages is probably not easy,"
"It looks like they don't want breakfast" my dad said from the kitchen, but it was obvious he meant it as 'Come here now or you won't get anything' "We can't let that happen" Thalia said, being completely serious. "Chill Thals, worst case scenario; you don't get breakfast, but we'll have lunch not too long after that." "Sorry, but you gotta remember that for two years, I was homeless. Back then, you never knew when your next opportunity to get food would be, so you couldn't just miss one, and I haven't really been able to get rid of that mindset." To Percy's surprise, I was able to confirm that to some extent. "It's actually kind of a problem, I sometimes trust people just because they provide me with something to eat, or at least it used to be that way. But not missing the opportunity is still unreasonably high on my list of priorities, speaking of which…" Thalia and I stormed out of my room to the kitchen, Percy following a few meters behind and mumbling something about girl logic. Now, I could have given him a long talk about the difference between being irrational (By the way, girl logic isn't irrational, it just seems that way because it can be very complex) and remainders of now obsolete instincts, but said instincts stopped me from doing so.
After breakfast, I passed some time by defeating everyone at chess, before it was time to leave for camp half blood. But first, we'd pay a visit to camp Jupiter. As we were saying goodbye, my dad asked me how exactly we were going to get back. "I recently developed a method of traveling over water at incredible speeds, like one kilometer per second. After camp Jupiter, we'll be going through the Panama canal and back up the east coast." "Would that also work on fresh water? And upstream through a small river?" "I think so" "Well, in that case, I might have a shortcut for you. He took us to his office. On his computer, he showed Percy a map of the US. "On this map, every river is enlarged by a factor of about 100, so you can follow them more easily. And if you go here" He showed Percy the delta of the Columbia river "and continue through these rivers here, you'll eventually come out at New Orleans. Alternatively, you can turn around here and go up the Ohio river, taking you much closer to New York through a lot of smaller rivers and creeks" "That's actually gonna save us a lot of time, thanks for that"
While they had been talking, I had remembered something. "I meant to ask you this two days ago, but have you heard from Magnus and Natalie recently? I haven't met them in almost a decade, so maybe I should catch up with them." "Well, I haven't heard from them in about as long. I'll try to contact them, but our family has been in discord for so long, that's gonna be difficult." "Listen, I have no idea what your family has been up to" Percy said. "But I've just ended the Poseidon vs. Athena rivalry, and that has been going on for a bit longer. Just a bit. I'm sure you'll get everything sorted out" Have I mentioned how good Percy is at reassuring, even if he has no idea what's going on? Another of many, many things I love about him. We said goodbye again, and for the first time in years, I left my dad's home being happy. Well, I wasn't happy about leaving, but you get what I mean. I wasn't fleeing from home and I was also not sad about Percy being gone. This time, I was actually looking forward to returning.
We all got into Percy's boat and he summoned water to get us back to the bay. Like last time, Thalia used the mist to disguise us as a car. We covered some distance over the water of the bay before going back on land. "Where are we going now?" Thalia asked.
Percy
"Didn't I tell you already?" I asked. "We're going to camp Jupiter. You've never seen it, right? And Annabeth also just got a few glimpses of it before Leo bombed everything." Both girls confirmed what I had said. After another while of land boating, I stopped. "I think I'll leave the boat here, I have a feeling the Romans aren't a big fan of magical boats. It's not that far anymore" We followed the same route that I had taken ten weeks ago. It felt like a lifetime. I temporarily became a tourist guide and told the girls about everything interesting. "And the dent in this tree was caused by an angry gorgon swinging a metal tray of free samples at me." Well, my definition of what was interesting was a tiny bit self-centered, or, as Annabeth would say, egocentric. The first time she had used that word, I had thought that my dyslexic tendency to mix up the order of letters had started affecting spoken language as well.
"Now, we just need to get down here and we'll be at the entrance" I explained. "You two don't happen to have any large metal trays?" "No, I guess we'll just have to climb down." And so we did and luckily, the side of the road did not contain any old ladies that were actually goddesses in disguise and we were able to cross the lane going into the tunnel with relative ease. The magical (and the normal) mist was very dense here, so I had to look a bit harder before noticing the two guards. Through their armor, it took me a second to recognize that they were the same as last time: Frank and Hazel, except that this time, it was apparent that they were a couple. "What kind of coincidence is this?" Hazel asked. "I have no idea, maybe whoever gave you guard duty today was informed by some higher being, since I've heard here's a lot of those." "Could be. Gods Making us confused is still better than gods making us suffer, but why don't you come in?" Frank and Hazel opened the way to the maintenance Tunnel. "So, Percy, Annabeth, what brings you here today, and also, who is she?" "We were just visiting Annabeth's Dad, he lives like ten kilometers from here. And I am Thalia, Jason's sister." "Oh, I've heard lots about you. Recently, Hazel and I have been trying to figure out how exactly you two are related, since you have the same mother and also the same father, but not really, so you're more than half siblings but also not true siblings. Before the giant war, we just had the Roman gods and that was it. No partially identical parent ms." "Ms?" "Minotaurschist"
By now we had reached the exit to the secret tunnel. "Finally" Annabeth mumbled. I looked at her, not knowing what she meant. "Ancient underground tunnels are a bit… difficult for me. Especially if they're below a place that has Rome in the name. And I know that the tunnel isn't technically below new Rome, but my trauma doesn't care. Speaking of trauma, have I actually told you two?" "Told us what? That you're severely traumatized from childhood on? We knew that." "Well, there's actually more to it than that. You see, my earliest trauma caused my personality to never fully integrate, so now I have multiple identities or alters within my brain. Sometimes they take control of my body. It's called Dissociative identity disorder." Now the seven were all informed, apart from Leo. "So that's what was up with that girl" Hazel said to herself. "What girl?" Annabeth asked. "I'll show you"
She reached for Annabeth's and my hand and darkness surrounded us. When I could see again, I was floating in a small room, apparently inhabited by a young girl. Next to me were Hazel and Annabeth. In the middle of the room was a younger Hazel, drawing something. When I went closer, I recognized it as a diamond, with the original lying next to the paper. It would have probably been worth many millions, had it not been cursed. "What is this, a mist vision?" Annabeth asked. "No, technically it's a flashback. Not the traumatic kind, more like the I-died-for-seventy-years-and-that-messed-with-my-memories-kind. I learned that I could share them with others just before the Argo II arrived. Since then, they've stopped showing up on their own, but I've learned to start them on purpose." Young Hazel seemed to be happy with her picture, as she left her room and showed the picture to her mother. She looked at it for a while. "This looks great. And drawing treasures is much better than summoning them" "You know I don't do that on pur-" she was interrupted by the doorbell ringing downstairs. "Wait here sweetie" she said before walking to the door. She opened it and Marie Levesque became Queen Marie. "What brings you here today?" She asked the two people in the door, a woman and her daughter, maybe ten years old, as she led them inside.
"It appears she's possessed by some spirit" The mother explained. "Or perhaps even multiple spirits" "What makes you think that?" "Well, see for yourself. This is the best way to make them take control" the mother started singing a few lines of a song I didn't recognize, probably because this was over seventy years ago. After a short while, the girl's eyes closed for a few seconds before opening back up. Now, the girl spoke, but with the voice of a boy. "Mommy, where am I?" "See, she's obviously possessed by demons. Some of them are really mean and hurt her body. What can I do?" Queen Marie spent the next twenty minutes or so explaining the best ways to get rid of possessive spirits. When asked about how everything had begun, the mother revealed that her daughter had been abused as a young child. She didn't go into much detail, or maybe Hazel's mind just hadn't been able to process everything so it didn't appear in her memory, the same way one would not be able to remember a conversation in a language that they didn't know. During the conversation, another one of the supposed demons took control, but the mother didn't care apart from saying "see, another one of those demons" after which the daughter insisted on not being a demon. At the end, the mother thanked Queen Marie for her help and gave her some money. "Hazel, you're still here" Marie said as she saw her daughter still sitting on the staircase. "You know you're not supposed to-" The rest was cut off by the flashback ending, which brought us back to the border of camp Jupiter. "Is this what you have?" Frank asked. "First of all, how do you know what we just saw, you weren't there." "Hazel used the mist to relay the flashback to Thalia and me" "Oh, in that case, that did seem a lot like DID and not like possession. Personally, I've never encountered eidolons, except right before piper made them disappear but that was only a few seconds, but from what others have told me, they're different. So, to answer your question, this is what I have. So far, I know of five different alters. I'd tell you about each one, but last time I did that, it caused me a lot of confusion." "I know them too; do you want me to explain?" Percy suggested. "Good idea, I'll go somewhere I can't hear you. " First, there's Annabeth herself, then Annie, a young girl holding the memories of her journey to camp half-blood with Thalia, Luke and Grover, Luisa, she's even younger than Annie and holds older trauma. There's also someone who seems to be there to protect her, but we don't know his name yet. He's kind of a mix of the people who have protected her the most: Thalia and me. The last one's named Chris and he holds the trauma from you know where, though he might not be the only one, since that alone might have been too traumatic for one person to handle. I mean, just imagine having to go through all of that as a single person" I said sarcastically. "To be fair, she had it worse than me." I would have told her what exactly I meant, but decided against it, since lists of traumatic events weren't a very nice thing to say in the proximity of said people. But she had thought that she had lost me, twice, and been blinded, so it had been worse for her in total. Plus, she hadn't been able to walk properly, which isn't technically traumatic, but still sucked. Anyways, enough of me invalidating my own trauma because Annabeth has had it slightly worse.
"I wonder what my seaweed brain is thinking about now" Annabeth interrupted my train of thought. I hadn't even noticed her returning. "Uh, I was thinking about what we could do together now, maybe I can show you the city" "Please, I know that's not what you've been thinking about, but it's a good idea anyways" We approached the border of new Rome. Just as we were about to cross it, Terminus appeared before us. "Hey, no weapons beyond the border!" I already knew what I had to do and put riptide onto his magical tray. "It disables the return function" I explained to Annabeth. "Do I really have to?" She asked. "You know, I hate giving my knife away" "Sorry, rules are rules." Annabeth hesitantly put her dagger away before following me into the city.
In case you were wondering about whether DID sucks in ways not directly related to your trauma, now you know the answer. People sometimes think you're possessed by demons. I guess this has gotten a bit better since the thirties but still, no good minority representation story is complete without a bit of prejudice. I think otherwise I'll be sparing Annabeth from that though, mostly because CHB s like the most accepting place on the planet and everyone else doesn't have to know.