Hello! I am back with another update for you. It took a little longer to get written than I expected as I hit a brick wall about half way through and it took me bout a week to figure out how to write my way past it, but here we are!
This chapter is mostly just a bit more setup for some future plots and events, but I hope you enjoy it. I have part of Chapter 42 already written, so I should hopefully have that ready for you all soon. Enjoy!
Logan's birthday came and went with little change from him. He never did make a decision on what he wanted for a gift and Annabeth made an executive decision on dinner. We feasted that night on a healthy meal of pizza and nachos, previously some of his favorites, and Jasmine and Jarrod, a long-time friend of Logan's, came over. Annabeth had taken it upon herself to invite them after receiving a noncommittal answer from Logan about it. Both of them were mortal and believed the story about the skateboarding accident. Both seemed uncomfortable at the quiet, brooding version of him that had replaced the charismatic, happy-go-lucky one they'd come to know. Neither stayed long, and Annabeth worried having them over had only made things worse.
Needless to say, it was a far cry from the sixteenth birthday we would have liked for our son.
Another week passed as January turned into February and life continued on in our sad new version of normal.
I sat in the living room with Ollie laying at my feet, only half-paying attention to Nicky and Hannah, sparring outside in the yard, just visible through the back door from where I sat. The frozen ground around them was littered with layers of clothing—a hat here, a coat there, which they'd shed piece by piece as they exercised. Annabeth sat across from me, a book open before her. Carly lay on the floor with Ollie, her head pillowed on his side, watching a movie I wasn't listening to in favor of eavesdropping on the conversation, if you could really call it such, floating up from the open basement door—Ollie got upset if he didn't have free rein to go up and down to visit as he pleased—down the hall.
"I don't want to do that!"
"I'm not giving you a choice."
"It's my body. That automatically gives me a choice."
"Not if you want your body to work again." A pause. "Don't scoff at me."
"Then don't lie to me."
The bickering continued, like it always did whenever Madison came over to work with Logan. Madison was the incredibly smart, at times hot-headed, daughter of Apollo tasked with Logan's physical therapy after the quest. She came over twice a week and was maybe the only person I'd encountered so far stubborn enough to be appropriately matched to his post-injury funk. Which was saying something, gods bless her.
Though the same age as Logan, Madison was graduating high school early and had plans to start college in the fall. She planned to attend school to practice physical therapy in the mortal world one day, though she'd already been trained extensively by her brothers and sisters at camp and was as capable as they came.
Logan spoke more during their biweekly sessions than he did the rest of the week put together. Granted, most of it consisted of bickering, sarcasm, and him just generally being difficult, but it was something. At this point, even wildly out of character behavior was better than nothing.
And yet, some part of me knew he didn't actually dislike her at all.
The teenagers' argument continued as Logan questioned Madison's methods, as he always did, and she countered that he could feel parts of his legs when there'd been nothing to start.
"That was forever ago. There hasn't been any progress in months," he protested, a fact I knew ate at him far more than he let anyone know.
"And there never will be if you don't do the exercises."
Outside, Nicky disarmed Hannah for the third time in a row. She was not a bad fighter by any means, but Nick had become nothing short of a prodigy with a sword and even with her Roman fighting style, she was no real match for him. I watched distractedly as he walked her through a parrying technique.
"Di immortales, Logan, for the love of all the gods, just do the exercise."
"...Fine."
An hour later, Madison had returned to camp and Logan was back to brooding in the living room, having lifted himself from his chair to sprawl face down across the couch with an ice pack on his back. Carly had retreated upstairs when her movie finished and Annabeth had since recruited me to assist in her spur-of-the-moment decision to organize the bookshelf lining the wall because her own ADHD manifested itself in strange ways. Which is how I came to be standing beside her, a stack of books in my arms and another piled on the floor beside me, passing titles up to her one by one as she replaced them on the freshly dusted top shelf from atop a stool. I wondered, for the umpteenth time, why one person, especially a dyslexic person, could possibly need, much less want, so many books, but that was a battle I'd waged and lost on numerous occasions before accepting that I would never understand. It was easier that way.
Carly returned then and crossed the room toward Logan. She leaned over the couch back beside him. "Wanna play a game?" she chirped, brown curls swaying as she leaned over him.
"No," he answered, voice muffled by the couch cushion.
"But I'm bored," she moaned.
"Hey, what did we say about that word?" Annabeth put in, not looking away from her task.
"Then what can I do?"
"Ollie needs a walk," she offered.
Carly looked expectantly back at her brother, who showed no sign of hearing. "Want to walk Ollie, Logan?"
"That's okay."
"Please?" she whined, "I don't like going alone."
"Take Nicky."
"He's not here. He left with Hannah before you came up here." Sue Lawrence had called and invited Nick to go bowling with them. We had no plans for the night, so we'd let them go.
"I don't want to go on a walk, it's cold," was all Logan said.
"Please?" Normally, we probably would have stepped in and stopped her pestering by now, but I hesitated, listening to the exchange, and honestly wondered if Carly might stand a chance at making progress with her brother in a way Annabeth and I rarely did as of late.
But Logan only deadpanned, "I said no."
Carly straightened and stopped her foot, eyebrows furrowed in annoyance. "You never want to do anything with me!" she accused, hurt, and then stormed away. Logan lifted his head and watched the back of her head as she left but made no effort to stop her. He stared after her for a second and then collapsed down on the cushion once more with a sigh.
Annabeth had paused her work during the exchange as well. We'd both watched Carly storm from the room and now she turned to look at me. I sighed quietly. "You good in here?" I asked. She nodded and took the remaining two books from my arms to move to the shelf.
I found Carly sulking at the bottom of the stairs, petting an excited Ollie who had followed her from the room, probably mistaking her dramatic exit for his cue to come play. She lurched away as the dog surged forward, going in for a wet kiss, but her lips turned up a bit at the corners.
"Hey, Peanut," I said, stopping in front of her, "Still want to go for a walk?" She nodded, her blue eyes lighting up some. "Get your coat and put Ollie's leash on." She moved to obey.
Five minutes later, I walked with her down the street, hands in my pockets against the brisk February air. I listened half-heartedly as she bemoaned the fact that we hadn't gotten any snow in weeks and thanks to the freak, unseasonably warm weather that had arrived last week and lasted all of one day before giving way to winter again, what little we'd had on the ground before was melted. Only spots of slush and frozen mud remained. Ollie pranced alongside her, unfazed and happy as could be.
Wrapped up in my own thoughts as I was, I didn't immediately notice when she grew quiet, and her next words drew me up slightly short. "Is Logan ever going to get better?" Her voice was quiet, like she wasn't sure if she was allowed to bring it up.
I glanced down at her briefly in surprise before staring forward at the road before us. "I don't know, kiddo. I hope so."
"He's not the same," she said, pouting slightly as she walked.
I sighed. "He's…"
"Mean?" she suggested before I could find the right words.
I suppressed the surprised laugh that threatened at that. It wasn't at all funny. "He's had a lot going on since the quest," I explained slowly, weighing each word, "Things like that take a while to move past. He doesn't mean everything he says."
She considered this. "I only want to help," she offered, her voice quiet, "He's so sad all the time, and quiet. And he never laughs."
"I know."
"He used to tell jokes all the time," she went on, as if I possibly needed convincing. "And play with me, even when I knew he didn't want to." I sighed again as we walked, struggling to form a reply while my heart broke at the situation all over again. At the effect it had not just on Logan, but my whole family. Carly's next words were so soft, I almost didn't catch them. "I don't think he likes me anymore."
"It's not you, Peanut," I offered, trying to explain despite myself. "He's frustrated with himself and embarrassed at the situation and that causes him to take his feelings out on other people, even if he shouldn't. He's got to figure it all out for himself and learn how to live with it all. We just have to be patient with him for right now."
"What is he embarrassed about?"
I weighed my words for a second before answering her. I knew Carly meant well and genuinely wanted to understand what was going on with the big brother she'd adored her whole life and who came home from the quest a very different person, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was gossiping with her about her brother behind his back. "That he can't walk and needs so much help with everything," I told her finally, "Lots of things that used to be easy before are hard or impossible for him to do now and that's a hard thing to accept. He has to relearn a lot of things. That's hard to do, especially when you like to be independent like Logan does."
We stopped as Ollie sniffed around the base of a telephone pole and waited while he decided if it was a spot worthy of marking his territory. Carly studied the setter for a minute before glancing up at me again. I was surprised at the hint of defiance now present in her blue eyes. "It's not fair," she declared, her voice soft but without a trace of weakness. "Logan's a hero. He saved Nicky. He was brave and strong, and he shouldn't be embarrassed that he got hurt."
I smiled as we continued walking again. "You're absolutely right. I think he'll get there, Peanut. Just be patient and make sure he knows you're there for him and you love him, no matter how upset he makes you, okay?"
She nodded a bit distantly. "What if…" she hesitated, "What if a monster comes? How can he fight if he can't walk or run?"
And there it was, the source of the fear that had plagued me for months now and only seemed to grow as each day passed with no improvement. The kids did not have to deal with the number of attacks I had as a kid, a fact for which I was beyond grateful, but they were still far from unheard of, and still just as dangerous as ever to an unprepared half-blood. And for one who couldn't walk, couldn't properly fight…
I'd lost more than a little sleep worrying about exactly that, and it seemed Annabeth and I weren't the only ones thinking along those lines.
"He has to learn how to defend himself in his wheelchair," I answered. Annabeth and I had discussed it at length, with and without Logan. He hated the idea, as he hated most things that required him to relearn tasks in order to accommodate his paralysis, but in the last month especially, we'd given him little choice in the matter. He'd been given leniency with a lot of things the past few months but I was through letting him slack off in that particular department, and Annabeth agreed. Not when his life depended on it.
With some suggestions from Madison, we'd been able to modify some basic defensive maneuvers to work with the wheelchair, as well as made clear the fact that he would, in fact, be attending camp for the summer session with his siblings whether he liked it or not. Surely, Chiron had some ideas. This couldn't be the first injury like this he'd dealt with.
To his credit, Logan had not argued that particular decision.
"Can he really do that?" Carly asked now.
"He's got to," I said simply, refusing to let even a hint of my true concern over the topic show through. My daughter wasn't even ten yet. She certainly didn't need that kind of weight on her shoulders.
She considered for barely a second before asking, "Can I help?" I looked at her as she went on, maybe thinking out loud. "If he has to relearn how to fight monsters, and I'm still learning how to fight them for the first time, can't we help each other? Maybe we can spar, or at least practice."
I smiled. "I think that would be a great idea if you can get Logan to agree."
Carly's answering smile was nothing short of stubborn Annabeth through and through. "I'll get him to agree," she said confidently, "Or I'll tell everyone at camp that he was scared to fight a girl."
I couldn't keep the edges of my mouth from turning up further her words. Gods, I loved my headstrong little girl.
And I thought, just maybe, her iron will might be exactly what Logan needed to kick him into gear.
Thank you for reading!
