Disclaimer: I do not own Rick Riordan, the Percy Jackson books, characters, series, movies, or anything else you may recognize.

Chapter Seventeen

Turn It Off

"What about us? What about everything we've been through?

What about trust?

You know I never wanted to hurt you.

And what about me?

What am I supposed to do?

I gotta leave but I'll miss you."

"Gotta Go My Own Way" from High School Musical 2

Tears welled in my eyes as I looked at Percy, the man I loved and would die a thousand times over for, who had lied to me, pretending he didn't remember. Why would he do that? And for what?

"How could you?" I whispered, yanking my wrist out of his grasp. I turned my back to him and started running back to the Argo II – there was no way any of these Romans were going to see me cry. Like Jason said, I couldn't show them any weakness.

I felt like he had ripped my heart right out of my chest and shattered it into a thousand glassy and see-through pieces. How could he do this to me? Why would he lie? I haven't seen him in over a year so he lies about remembering me?

"Andee, please! Just wait!" Percy called when I was only a few feet from the ladder. The Romans must have been keeping him well-trained because he was running fast enough to catch up to me. "Hera told me it was the only way I could keep you safe! I couldn't let anything happen to you again, Dee, I couldn't!"

I turned on my heel, whipping around to look at him, not caring now if my tears flowed freely or if my eyes were turning to flames. "How dare you? You disappear and I go out of my mind while our entire camp starts searching high and low for you, and then finally comes the day that we can be reunited and you do this? How could you? What the hell is wrong with you?"

"I am just trying to protect you! Hera said –"

"Oh yes, because Hera has always had my best interests at heart!" I shouted at him, ready to beat him to a pulp. I was so angry and so heartbroken that I had no idea which emotion I should be acting on. "I thought you were hurt or dead! Do you even know how that feels? And apparently you no longer have the Curse so that was actually a possibility! Do you even know how that feel?" I took a deep breath before saying the words that needed to be said, even if they killed me. "Stay away from me – I want nothing to do with you."

"Andee, don't say that, you know –"

"Don't touch me!" I screamed, backing away when he tried to put his arms around me. I wanted more than anything to just melt back into his arms, but I wasn't going to fall for that trick again. "Don't you dare touch me!" I looked down at the promise ring he had given me and almost laughed at how ironic it was. I slipped it off my finger. "'I promise to always be there for you. To always tell you the truth, even if it might hurt one of us.' I'm done with empty promises." I put the ring in his hands. "I'm done. We're over."

"Andee, no," he said desperately as I turned to walk away.

Leo stepped in and stopped Percy from coming near. "No, she said to stay away from her, so that's what you're going to do."

"You don't have any idea what's going on," Percy said, and suddenly my feet were frozen in place. "Get out of my way, Leo, I have to talk to Andee."

"You know, the one thing she has always talked about more than anything else was you. How much she loved you, how much she missed you, how excited she was to finally get to see you again. Andee is not the kind of girl you just treat like that – as clueless as I can be about girls, even I know that," Leo ranted. "Andee is not the kind of person who needs to be protected, and you of all people should know that. And you're not welcome on my ship until we leave to start the quest."

"Andee, please – just talk to me! We can work this out – please! I'm so sorry," Percy begged, and I could hear that he was on the verge of tears.

My whole body shook with sobs. I couldn't do this. I couldn't deal with this – it was all too much. There was a lump in my throat making it almost impossible for me to talk when I whispered, "I'm sorry too." I ran back to the ship, climbing up as fast as I possibly could. Once I was on board, it was like my body was on autopilot, heading straight to my room and locking the door behind me before collapsing on the ground in tears.

There had to be something I could do to stop this pain. I couldn't live the rest of the quest, let alone my life, feeling like this.

And then I remembered something I didn't know I remembered, especially after two years, but there it was, creeping back right when I needed it.

I picked myself up and headed to Piper's room first. No one locked their doors on the ship so I didn't even need to break in. When we had built the ship, we had designed it so that every person's room would represent their godly parent in some way, much like the cabins back at Camp Half-Blood. In Piper's room, because it represented Aphrodite, we actually had a life dove in a cage on her dresser. I reached into the cage and plucked one of the feather from the bottom of the cage, slipping it into my pocket before leaving for the next stop on my list.

In the Hypnos room, Clovis was back sleeping in his bed.

Typical.

At least it made my job easier.

I went over to the branch from the River Lethe and looked around the room for something I could store a few drops of its water in.

"Good gods, how does anyone find anything in this room?" I said under my breath.

"Hmm?" Clovis asked groggily. "Andee, is that you? Why are you in my room?"

"Just…doing a room check. Do you have any vials or something?"

"Vials? What are you trying to do?" Clovis asked, stifling a yawn as he got out of bed to come over to me.

"As a leader of this quest and the resident healer, I think it's important for me to have a few drops from the Rover Lethe in case of an emergency, alright?" I asked. He backed up a little and muttered something about going to get Annabeth and Jason before leaving the room. I finally found a small plastic bag that would do the job just fine and let a few drops drip into it, being careful to avoid it touching my skin just yet.

I went back to my room, closing the door and locking it behind me. I went into my adjoined bathroom and laid everything on the counter, returning to my bedroom to finish one last thing.

I went around my small room, trying to hold back my sobs as I pulled down every picture I had up that Percy was in. Everyone single one ripped another piece of my heart out and I wanted nothing to do with these pictures, but it was an important step in the spell that I was about to cast. I put all of the photos except for one in a box, locked it, and hid in the depths of my bag.

I went back to the bathroom with the last picture in hand and looked at my sorry state in the mirror for a moment before getting to work. I put the dove feather and the picture of Percy and I in the bag with the Lethe water and shook it around, the feather and the picture dissolving into liquid to mix with the Lethe water.

I remembered few things from my time with Kronos, but this potion happened to come out from the fog. A spell to make you forget – ironic, isn't it?

And what could this potion make you forget, you ask? Anything. A person, a place, a memory…a feeling. If it was a person or a place, you just had to throw in a picture of something representative of that place. If it was a feeling, you needed something to represent that feeling. By mixing those in with the Lethe water, you could forget whatever was hurting you.

I took a small vial out of the medicine cabinet and a pair of scissors, cutting a small hole in the corner of the bag and letting the liquid pour into the vial. I looked at the shimmering liquid carefully, mentally preparing myself.

Should I do this? First of all, it was a potion I had learned from the king of the Titans, the one we had only barely gotten rid of two years ago. The one who tried to destroy my life.

My brain said no, that this wasn't the logical choice at all and that I should just dump this potion down the drain. My heart, on the other hand, was begging for mercy, begging for me to do this. I could take a lot of pain – I had healed from some extremely gruesome injuries, and come back from the dead on multiple occasions. But this was the type of pain you couldn't just heal, and I didn't know how to cope with this. I was going to be useless on this quest if I kept on like this. I couldn't be near him – I couldn't even bear to think of his name.

I couldn't deal with this heartbreak for the rest of my life. I couldn't keep leaving my life up to stupid Prophecies or the finicky Fates to decide it for me. I had to take control. No more waiting on the gods, or the Fates, or whatever else to make the decisions for me. This was my life and it was time I lived it the way I wanted to. "Turn it off," I whispered to myself, gripping the bathroom sink. "Turn it off."

I downed the glittering mixture and the world turned to black around me.