"When did you first find out about the Great Prophecy?" Raine asked. Percy leaned back and put his hands in his pockets, frowning in thought.

"It's kind of hard to pin down," he admitted. "No one wanted to talk about it, and the people who knew about it especially didn't want to tell me about it. I knew Chiron had gotten an important prophecy, and by the end of that first summer I'd figured out it involved me, Kronos, and Annabeth."

"Your first summer?"

Percy grimaced. "Yeah. Fucked up, right? I went home and all I knew about it was that it was dangerous, and the gods wouldn't let Chiron tell me about it. So, enough to really freak me out, but not enough to actually prepare me."

"How did you feel about it that first year?" Raine asked. Percy winced.

"I should've guessed we'd have to do this year by year," he muttered. "I was better at not thinking about it then. Didn't have any nightmares at all, as far as I remember." He shrugged. "The mythical world didn't feel real to me yet. After I got back from that summer, everything kind of felt like a dream, the prophecy included. I'd think about it when I was thinking about camp, and it made me anxious, but not much more than that." He smiled a little. "A lot of the time, I was too busy enjoying living with Mom to think about any of it."

Raine smiled back, brief but warm, before refocusing. "Did you learn anything new the next summer?"

Percy's expression darkened. "Yeah," he said. "Uh, I knew that Annabeth knew about the prophecy, so I asked her about it during that quest. She didn't want to tell me about it, but..." He exhaled. "Luke had been hinting about it – he knew it too, and he was the one who told me it would trigger when I turned sixteen. We both knew there was more where that came from."

"Luke told you?" Raine asked. Percy grimaced.

"He was always doing stuff like that," he said. "Trying to turn me against the gods. But he's no Kronos. He's not good at manipulating people. Most of the time, I just got angry."

Raine made a note. "I may ask to return to that later," she cautioned. "But the prophecy. You asked Annabeth about it?"

"I wouldn't bother," Percy said, and then clarified, "The manipulation stuff. It was never a big deal to me, I hated him too much for him to get under my skin that way." Raine nodded, and he continued, "She told me that the next kid of the Big Three to turn sixteen would decide the fate of Olympus." Despite the fact that the prophecy had passed, his stomach turned, and he crossed and uncrossed his arms. "I asked why the gods let me stay alive, and she said that some of them were probably afraid of offending Dad, but... some of them were waiting to see what kind of hero I was. If they could count on me to stay loyal. And Kronos was watching me too, trying to turn me to his side."

His heart was hammering again, throbbing and unhappy, and his breath was coming shorter as the memory of crushing awareness came back to him. He pressed his hand to his chest, spreading his fingers across it like he could force it to settle, and took a deep, slow breath.

"Aischrón bólbiton," he muttered. "This is old news. It shouldn't be able to scare me like this anymore."

"You're processing old fear," Raine reminded him, and he sighed and nodded.

"Yeah... Yeah, I know. Anyway, we didn't have much time to talk about it, but that was pretty much as much as I knew about it until this summer." He hesitated, staring at a spot on the floor. "That... that really fucked me up, I think. You get it, right? I had the self-esteem of a boiled potato, but everyone was watching me to decide if they wanted to give me the weight of the world. And I knew it." He swallowed, and then laughed, empty and cracked. "Oh, gods, that's it, isn't it?"

"What is?" Raine asked gently.

"I answered the question for myself before I could hear what any of them thought," he said. "I mean, obviously I did, I was thinking about it all the time. I asked myself if I could be trusted with something that important, and I decided I couldn't." He clenched his fist. "And I knew that if they ever realized that, I was dead."

"Breathe, Percy," Raine said. "Count to ten and catch your breath."

Percy closed his eyes and obeyed, and felt a little of the hysteria recede. He nodded sharply, flattening his hand again, and continued without prompting.

"I was wrong, I guess," he said, surprising himself. "I did it. I'm okay. Everything's okay." He took another deep breath and let it out, running through one of the tension exercises to force himself to calm down, and dropped his hand back to the seat of the chair. "But what I was saying was, that was probably the biggest reason I got so bad. My shitty self-esteem combined with three years of thinking I wasn't good enough to save the world was..." He made a 'boom' motion with one hand. "Bad for me."

"Understandably so," Raine agreed. She glanced down and made another note, and said, "We'll circle back to this later in the session, but please, tell me what you learned next."

Percy nodded, grimacing a little.

"Well, the end of that summer, Thalia came back to life," he said. "Uh, Thalia, daughter of Zeus – I've mentioned her, but it's a long story. Anyway, she came out of the tree almost sixteen already."

"How did you feel about that?" Raine asked.

"You think I'd be relieved, right?" Percy said ruefully. "But to be honest, we both knew it was a big, big 'if' on which of us survived to face the prophecy, or if either of us would. It made things pretty tense between us at first." He wiggled his hand. "So I was anxious about it, more than I was the first summer, but it wasn't mine yet." He took a breath. "She swore an oath to Artemis that winter, and stopped aging the day before she turned sixteen. Then I realized Nico was a son of Hades, and... I claimed the prophecy."

"What do you mean?"

"I just... I decided to make sure it would be about me, I guess," Percy said, flushing a little. "I mean, I'd been dreading it all this time, but I knew it was coming whether I wanted it or not. But when I realized Nico was next in line... something clicked, I guess." He glanced at Raine. "If I didn't take this on, Nico would be in my place, and I couldn't let that happen. He was ten. That's, that's too young."

Raine gave him a small, soft smile. "And for the second half of that school year?" she asked. Percy exhaled.

"...I was putting on a brave face, I guess," he decided. "I still didn't know exactly what I'd have to do, but I wasn't the same kind of anxious. I mean- I was still afraid that I would make the wrong choice, and I was terrified of turning sixteen. But I wasn't so scared of the idea that it was me, you know? Does that make sense?"

"You claimed a bit of agency in your role," Raine said. "It gave you a feeling of control. I'm not surprised it reassured you."

Percy relaxed a little, relieved. "I didn't really learn anything the next summer," he said after a moment, skipping on ahead. "That was when Kronos rose, so everyone knew it was coming, and everyone was pretty sure it was me by then. And... that led to this last year."

"You've mentioned it's been stressful," Raine said, softer. Percy nodded, leaning back self-consciously.

"Yeah," he said. "I was kind of a mess, to be honest." He smiled ruefully. "My executive dysfunction went through the roof. Paul was a lifesaver; he held my hand through a lot of my homework assignments. I think I did maybe three without him the whole year."

"What else?" Raine prompted. Percy grimaced.

"Like, what was the stress doing to me?" he checked. Raine nodded. "Um."

"Treat it as similar to processing trauma," Raine instructed. "Did you ever get a chance to tell anyone how hard this year has been for you?"

"Oh. I guess not." Oddly, Percy relaxed, back on now-familiar ground. He tugged at his ear. "...You know, looking back, I know I did school stuff, and I skateboarded a lot and watched movies with Mom and Paul and whatever. But it's kinda hard to remember thinking about anything but the war. I failed half my classes because I'd just spend the whole period staring at the whiteboard, thinking about monsters."

"How do you feel about that now?" Raine asked. Percy exhaled.

"I'm not really surprised," he admitted. "It usually takes everything I have to scrape a pass, and I just didn't have anything to give last year." He bit his lip, and then decided, "I don't feel bad about it. But I'm upset about how the teachers talked to me." He scowled. "You know how teachers talk to delinquents, right?" Raine winced. "Yeah. If I hear the throwing-your-future-away talk one more damn time, I'm living in the ocean."

"You were thinking about getting a GED," Raine reminded him. Percy brightened.

"Oh, yeah. Hell, anything to get away from high school teachers." He tapped his feet cheerfully for a moment before he returned to the memory. "Anyway, that talk made me feel like garbage every time, even though I knew they were only saying that stuff because they didn't understand why I was acting like that." He rolled his eyes. "Speech after speech about children in third world countries who walk ten miles both ways to go to school, like that means other people don't have problems. Because I definitely needed to feel self-centered and entitled on top of everything."

"High school teachers are, to say the least, not mental healthcare professionals," Raine said wryly. Percy could only imagine how many teacher stories she'd heard, specializing in troubled teens. "Were there any particular incidents?"

Percy grimaced. "Uh, one." Raine gestured. "There was- um, the biggest one was when I had to present in Paul's class." He scowled. "I told him I wasn't ready, but he has this thing about pushing me to have more confidence in school, and he didn't really get it yet."

"What happened?"

"I panicked," Percy said, grimacing at the memory. "Like, I genuinely thought I was having a nightmare. My PowerPoint was half-finished and full of stupid stand-in phrases, I couldn't remember writing any of it, and I felt like I wasn't even really saying the words that were coming out of my mouth."

"A dissociative episode," Raine concluded. Percy shrugged.

"I guess so, looking back," he said. "Anyway, Paul stepped in pretty quick, gave the class a ten minute break and led me into one of the teacher's break rooms. Made me drink a glass of water and let me sit out the rest of class."

"What happened afterward?" Raine asked.

"Pretty much a full-tilt breakdown," Percy admitted. "See, I told him I hadn't finished the assignment, and he asked how much of it was finished, so I told him it was about half done, because I didn't want him to think I'd slacked off completely." He shrugged. "It was Paul's class, so I was really trying. He told me I could present a half-finished project and it was better than nothing. I know he was trying to build my confidence, but..." He waved his hand with a grimace. "Anyway, I yelled at him for sending me up there when he knew I hadn't finished, and he put up with it and apologized for not listening to me. And it smoothed out, I guess."

"How did you handle it when you got home?"

"Well, I skipped all my homework that weekend, for one," Percy confessed, wincing. "Paul didn't say a word about it, but I think it was just because he felt bad. I was pretty mad at him though. I... kind of convinced myself that he'd embarrassed me as a punishment for not finishing, and Mom had to talk me out of it. It was the first real fight me and him had, including when he thought I set the band room on fire."

"Are you happy with how it resolved?" Raine asked.

"...Yeah," Percy decided. "I mean, even the fact that he apologized meant a lot to me, and he promised not to do it again. And he hasn't." He shrugged. "That was only a couple months into last year, and it hasn't happened again yet. That's a good precedent, right?"

"It's very good," Raine agreed, making a note. She caught Percy looking and added with a small smile, "We're approaching the end of your time here now, so we'll start setting goals and action plans soon. Your relationship with Paul is one of the things I'd like to talk about." Percy shrugged, and Raine continued, "Keep telling me about last year. Was that as bad as things got at school?"

Percy thought about it. "Yeah. The bullying pretty much stopped sometime the year before last, so I didn't have to deal with that, and classwork wasn't really my biggest worry."

Raine nodded. "What about at home?"

"I had a lot of nightmares," Percy said. "Like, a lot." He glanced away. "There was one, where Grover or Annabeth or someone would push me into the River Styx and I'd drown, that I had almost every week. And the one where the Empire State building fell – I woke up thinking it was real, it took Mom like an hour to calm me down because I was practically dreaming with my eyes open." He softened a little. "That one really rattled Paul. We'd only told him about who I was a couple weeks before."

"And what about you?" Raine prompted.

"...I spent a lot of time awake at night," he admitted. "I kinda got tired of trying, you know? I mean, I'd fall asleep for the night, wake up a couple of hours later, and not even try to go back to sleep." He grimaced. "Looking back, I probably should've, because that definitely wasn't helping anything. But I got sick of spending so much time lying down and feeling anxious."

"What did you do instead?"

"Learned how to use a computer," Percy said ruefully, and then clarified, "Uh, I wasn't super interested before that, because I like spending time outside more. But I started watching a lot of silly videos, stunts and stuff, and Mom and Paul got me a couple computer games for Christmas."

"How do you think that coping mechanism worked for you?" Raine asked. Percy frowned.

"Okay," he decided. "I mean, I really should've found a way to get back to sleep, but playing around took my mind off things." Percy fidgeted. "That's okay, right? I mean- I couldn't do anything, or change anything, I was just... waiting. So it wouldn't help to think about it. It was okay to not think about it, wasn't it?"

"It sounds what you needed most was to relax," Raine agreed. Percy smiled in relief. "I'm glad you found a way to do that. We'll talk about effective self-care soon, but let's keep going for now. How did you feel during the day?"

"I tried to keep really, really busy," he admitted. "I spent a lot of time skateboarding." He tugged on his hair and smiled a little. "Rachel convinced me to get a diving certification, and I went on a few volunteer dives. Conservation and cleanup and stuff. That was a lot of fun." He hesitated, and then continued, "I was... still anxious, but I tried to push it to the back of my mind. I didn't really talk about it to anyone but Mom, and no one else did, either. It was kind of the elephant in the room every time I visited camp."

"And how did you feel about how it was affecting you?" Raine asked. Percy started.

"...I didn't think about it," he said softly, and then elaborated, "I didn't resent it or anything. There's no point, you know? Fate is fate, and... I really believe that. The Oracle didn't make Kronos rise, or Luke betray Olympus, and it didn't make me listen to Annabeth." He shrugged. "It helped shape the future, but it didn't write it."

"That's a very mature way of looking at it," Raine said. "Did you resent your fate, then?"

Percy frowned. Finally, he shook his head.

"I don't think it occurred to me to," he said. "I was mad at Luke and Kronos and Olympus and everything, but the prophecy was just kind of there. Fact of the universe." He considered. "That's probably a demigod thing. I knew in my blood that it was real."

"That's fascinating," Raine admitted, and Percy smiled a little. "Is there anything else you want to tell me about last year?"

Percy hesitated, warily casting his mind back. He was startled to realize how much of it he'd told Raine already, about wishing his dad was there for him, the brooding about Luke, the spirals of self-loathing and frustration.

"...I was mad at Mom, too, sometimes," he said at last, so quietly that Raine had to lean in to catch it. He stared down at his hands and fidgeted with the hem of his shirt. "I mean- it wasn't fair to her. But she was the other half of the broken oath, you know?" He wrinkled his nose. "I guess I resented being born. Ugh. That's a new low. But... yeah. Sometimes I got mad at Mom for having me at all, and I knew it was- um, irrational, so I didn't know how to respond. I mean- you know how hard it is for me just to say she did something wrong."

Raine nodded. "Feelings don't have to be rational," she reminded Percy. "You're not wrong to be angry about the injustices in your life, no matter how that anger presents itself to you, and it's a testament to your self-control that you didn't take it out on your mother. You don't need to feel guilt for your emotions."

Percy sighed, glancing at the window as a faint ache of frustration passed through him. "Can I say something really self-pitying?"

"Of course."

"I think my life is cursed," Percy said bluntly, without looking at Raine. "I mean, like, literally cursed. Because of the broken oath." He glanced over, and Raine, frowning, gestured for him to continue. "Grover told me, way back when I first came to camp, that gods couldn't be affected by broken Styx oaths, so it fell on their kids. And I thought that just meant, like, making it more likely for us to die. But last year I started thinking it might be more than that." He shrugged, embarrassed. "I mean, maybe it's just because I was so unhappy last year. But it feels true."

"How do you feel about that?" Raine asked, not giving away her own thoughts this time.

"I'm sad," Percy decided, kicking his feet. "It really, really sucks." He hesitated, considering, and then continued, "It feels kind of like the prophecy does. I don't like it, it's unfair, but it's also not my fault, you know? It's just the way it is." He shrugged wearily. "Nothing I can do about it even if it is true."

"Does that bother you?"

Percy frowned for a moment, glancing at her quizzically, and then his expression cleared. "You mean, does it make me want to die?" he asked wryly. Raine nodded, unabashed. "Not really. I mean, I already knew my life was harder than most, but I kind of just figured my luck was shitty. It's kind of comforting in a way to know that it's completely out of my hands."

"I hope that doesn't stop you from trying to improve it," Raine murmured. Percy grinned a little.

"Nah," he said. "I'm not a fan of fatalism."

It took Percy a while to decide what to say and how to start, lying in bed with the lights off. Finally, he rolled over, pulled up the covers, and decided to bite the bullet.

"Hey, Dad," he said, murmuring half into the blankets in his embarrassment. "You don't have to listen if you're busy, I just wanted to talk to you. Tell you how I'm doing and stuff." He faltered for a moment, almost losing his nerve, but pushed forward. It made him oddly anxious to imagine that Poseidon really was paying attention. "Um, I dunno if anyone told you - I know Apollo knows, but… uh, I've been in residential therapy for about ten weeks now, and my therapist thought praying to you more often would help me feel closer to you. You can tell me if it bothers you and I'll stop."

He went quiet for a minute, rubbing the blanket between his fingers, and contemplated just leaving it there. But half the monologue had been Percy apologizing for talking to Poseidon at all. That sucked.

"It's been nice here," he said at last, eyes unfocused as he vaguely imagined Poseidon listening, somewhere under the sea. "I've gotten to talk about a lot of stuff that's been bothering me for a long time. You know me and Mom have never been able to talk to each other about the stuff Gabe did to us? But we've done it now and it felt good. And I got to talk today about how scared I was of the Great Prophecy even before I knew what it said. And Annabeth's going to help me explain to Chiron why I'm so rude to gods." He sighed. "There's… I was kinda upset at first, that Chiron sent me here, but I'm glad now. It's helped a lot."

He hesitated for a few more minutes, trying to think of anything else to say, but eventually shook his head.

"I'll probably have more interesting stuff to say once I'm out of here," he mumbled, embarrassment welling up again. He was probably just bothering Poseidon. "But, um, if you listened to all that? Thanks."