Next, I had chemistry with Piper. Interpret that however you want. I Interpreted it as going to the chemistry lab with her for approximately ninety-five minutes and learning according to the standard curriculum and from a teacher. We kept talking about stuff like organic chemistry and boiling points within the homologous sequence of alkanes. Terribly interesting, I know. Since Chemistry teachers absolutely love to contradict themselves, she also tossed in a completely new model of the atom that subdivides Bohr's shells into orbitals. Out of all the subjects, there probably isn't one whose structure I hate more than chemistry. Teaching a model that you can later expand upon instead of just giving us the whole thing in the beginning would have been fine, but so far most of our models had straight up contradicted their precursor since that one had been a blatant lie. I should probably stop complaining now and focus on the lesson instead.
During the five minute break, I left the class for to go to the bathroom. Around half way there, I saw a boy approaching me. I hadn't noticed him here before, but it was a big school. "Finally, we're alone" he said. From my experience, this didn't mean "I can talk to you/ flirt with you uninterrupted now", it was more of a "No one will help you as I slowly kill you" As I didn't want to die, I began to make a plan. I didn't have my knife with me, the only celestial bronze I had was the tiny spike on my obsidian ring. I was used to close combat, but this would still be somewhat new territory. I pretended to be scared and slowly walked backwards into the nearest corner. Risky, I know, but I would also gain an advantage so I had to take that risk. As the mysterious boy approached (in a way that definitely signaled "I'll kill you") I pressed myself deeper into the corner. He came to a stand right in front of me. I put one foot behind his, he didn't even notice. "I didn't think it would be that easy to kill you, but I'm not complaining. Say goodbye to your life, Annabeth Chase"
Without hesitating any longer, I kicked the back of his knee, destabilizing him. At the same time, I pushed myself away from the walls. The collision knocked both of us over, but I got up first since I knew what was coming. As fast as I could, I kneeled down on his chest. I held my ring right up to his eyes. No, eye. This guy was a cyclops, my most hated type of monster. Tyson doesn't count. "Do you see this?" I asked him. "This is celestial bronze. One punch and you're dead" "Please don't kill me. I don't want to go back to Tartarus. You don't know what it's like" "I do. Which is why I will not be killing you. That is a fate I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemies. I'll let you live, as long as you leave me and Piper alone" "Okay, I'll do it" "Swear it on the Styx" "I swear on the Styx that I will not seriously attack you or Piper" "Good. Wait, what do you mean by seriously?" "I mean, if we're like in opposite teams in PE or something, I should be able to play the game without pissing off the fates, right?" "Fine"
The fight had taken me so long that I didn't return to class in time, but a "I just came from the toilet. Do you really want to know what took me so long" ended all questions. Only Piper gave me an asking look. "Cyclops" I told her. "Made a truce with him, he won't bother us anymore" "Your ability for problem solving is truly amazing" "In this world, you're either perfect at everything you do, or you die" "Don't be so negative" "I'm being realistic. I've been through countless situations that 95% of people would not have survived. If you want to stay alive, you have to be in the top five." "Fine, you're barely good enough. Is that what you wanted to hear?" "Well, no but- Fine, you win. Just this one time" "Yesss" A judgmental look from our teacher shut her down. Of course, it was no where near as good as my death glare, but as a teacher she automatically had some legally issued authority simply because of her position, so we were kind of forced to obey. I didn't want to risk a bad mark for my behavior. Not that I'd actually get it, but still. We continued learning about orbitals and s2p6 configurations and all that schist. Eventually, we were released into English class. The most notable thing that happened in this lesson was the teacher giving us a molecular structure for a fictional chemical that was not chemically plausible as it contained a carbon atom with six bonds. Also, it wasn't really fictional, the teacher just misspelled glutamic acid as glutamatic acid and got the formula a bit wrong. I also had an unplanned encounter with the school's native fauna. Said fauna presented itself in the form of a small arachnid crawling onto my table. Since the spider was quite small, the same applied to the panic rising in me. "Stay away from me" I whispered. The spider followed my command, fleeing to the far corner of the table where Piper granted it asylum and declared it "Super cute". It appeared to be a jumping spider. Jumping spiders were sometimes called the cats of the spider world, due to their excellent vision and their ability to, well, jump, meaning it was cute by spider standards, but terrifying by any others. It was also very small, which was why I could tolerate it sitting on Piper's end of the table where it could not attack me. I mean, logically it couldn't and probably wouldn't attack me, but phobias followed their namesake's motto of "Stop thinking about it, just feel" I still hated that. Well, technically it wasn't even Phobos' motto, just Piper's for defeating him, but then again her "strategy" had relied heavily on doing exactly what the enemy wanted us to do, so maybe that concept also came from the twins originally and Piper had somehow picked up on that, but of course there was no real way to find o- just ask her, she's right there! That just came out of nowhere but I guess it was correct. "Pipes?" "Yeah?" "Remember 'stop thinking about it, just feel'?" "Of course I remember. Probably the gayest thing I've ever done" "You literally kissed a girl once" "The gayest thing I've done while sober" "Was that your own concept or did you like use your love and hate radar to figure out how the temple worked and it actually came from Phobos?" "My memory is already not the best, by which I don't mean bad, just not outstandingly amazing, by default and the intense fear I was feeling back then probably didn't help it" "You remembered how gay it was easily" "I'll try. Nope, English lessons and trauma memories combined are too much to handle. Maybe later" We went back to more or less following the lesson, as well as was possible with our ADHD. After that lesson, we had a break. Piper found us a quiet place where we could sit down. "So, where did 'stop thinking about it, just feel' come from? I'll try my best to remember and to not have a panic attack, but I can't guarantee for either. Let's do this" "If something happens, I'll be there for you" I said with the same enthusiasm as a flight attendant explanation how to fasten the seat belt for the 3141st time. I had done it many, many times, but I still felt that it was necessary. As a demigod, you have to get used to the fact that mental stability is a scarce resource and getting as much of it as possible is pretty much necessary.
I watched Piper think about the temple of fear (Probably) "I can't really remember it. I'm sure the memory is there, but I can't reach it, like the knowledge in the middle of a test" "How do you handle this? The fear, the hate" "Thanks. I think what I said was just a general rule in the temple, so yes, Phobos follows the motto of 'Stop thinking about it, just feel'" So far, Piper was not having a panic attack, there was only a small shiver in her voice. "Good. That means I can blame Phobos for my arachnophobia, or at least for how irrationally strong it is. And Phobos is a son of Ares, who only exists because Zeus couldn't keep it in his pants, and you know what that means" "Allosexuality is bad?" "Correct, though I'm suspecting he might be ace himself" "Zeus? Ace? Have you lost your mind? Do you need a doctor?" "Hear me out. Two reasons. Number one Zeus absolutely supports ace rights. He has some questionable views on consent, but once someone actually says that they don't want a relationship at all, aka is ace (and I know is not the exact same thing but for the sake of argument we'll pretend it is) he 100% fully supports it, because he is ace himself." "Couldn't that just be general queer solidarity? Isn't he bi?" "Yeah, but bisexuality was the norm for men in ancient Greece, so bi people probably weren't part of the group that would eventually become the LGBTQ" "Fine, reason number two?"
"Zeus constantly gets himself new side chicks, but in the long run, his relationships never work out" "Because Zeus is a douchebag. No one could put up with him for an extended period of time" "Oh, I don't think it's necessarily the other person's fault every time. Just think about how devastated Beryl was when Zeus left her. She most definitely didn't send him away, that was all Zeus' doing. It's almost like he looses interest in people once he gets to know them. If you now replace 'interest' with 'sexual attraction', you get something that actually has a name: Fraysexual. This identity is part of the asexual spectrum. It's not one that particularly agrees with my personal ideas about asexuality, but that doesn't give me the right to gatekeep" "So Zeus is asexual. Not sure if I agree with you, but you do have some good points and it distracted me from a potential panic attack. That temple left memories that are the equivalent of a phobonuclear bomb" "That word doesn't even exist and I still know exactly what you mean" "I don't think I ever realized how bad this was for you" "What do you mean?" "Well, the temple makes you re-experience my worst memories. Therefore it makes sense that the horror of the temple is proportional to the amount and severity of all the other trauma you have, and you are incredibly far ahead of me. If if was horrible for me, how much worse much it have been for you?" "It was really bad. If I recall correctly, I had an extra serving of dinner that evening because of all the calories that went into trembling with fear. On the other hand, you have to consider that I have almost a decade of experiences with suppressing the immediately symptoms of trauma, so it wasn't quite as bad as you might expect. It was still bad though. You can ask Percy if you want to, he'll know how much help I needed." "Want do I need to ask for. Your needs-cuddles-score?" "Pretty much. Hey, it helps" "Never said it didn't" "I thought you were giving me a judging look" "I would never. It's just your trust/abandonment/expectation issues telling you I'll do something bad to you." "Expectation issues?" "Well, 'Issues related to your expected regarding whether or not people will respect your needs' is a bit of a mouthful, so I abbreviated it a bit" "Makes sense. Whatever issue it is and whatever you call it, I should really start working on it" "You don't need to. Your trust has to be earned and that's okay. Forcing yourself to trust people quickly after others have betrayed your trust would be like someone who just survived being stabbed forcing themselves to go to a kitchen where there's lots of sharp knives. Your issues are likely rooted not only in expectations, but also in fear, both of which are in turn rooted in trauma, so by trying to ignore the issues, you're basically shoving down trauma which has a tendency to be not so good for you in any capacity" "Okay, then I guess I'll just stay paranoid for the rest of my life" "Your not paranoid, just very distrustful. And I didn't say that your trust issues can't be resolved, just that that wouldn't be your job right now. You need help with, well, you need help with a lot of things, please get therapy, but on this issue you specific need help that we can provide. My idea was that the more people prove to you that they are trustworthy, the more you'll see betrayal as an exception rather than the norm." "Sounds like a plan. Let's hope it'll actually work. On the other hand, I'm not so sure I'll like immediate trust" "You used to say the same thing about sexual attraction" "And I still stand by it 100%. Fine, it'll probably help with certain steps that will be necessary once Percy and I want to have children. Or have to, in case Caleo becomes a thing and they make some baby fire users, the safety of the planet would benefit from also having a few additional water controllers. So it's more like 97%. It might be similar with my trust issues." "Okay but can we just take a moment to think about the fact that when you think about having children, the worst part you can think of is what is often considered the peak of human experiences." "That's Minotaur schist" "It's really not that bad" "I think we were talking about trust issues originally" "Well, originally, we were talking about the temple of fear." "Right. The trust issues only came in after I thought you'd judge me based on my reaction to the temple and how I dealt with it" "By cuddling with Percy" "Exactly"
We spend the rest of the break talking about not trauma. At least we tried, but it didn't really work. We did manage to go through the break without any severe adverse trauma effects though, or at least not more than usually, which to be honest wasn't necessarily that good, because I was always affected by trauma in some way. For example, I have the tendency to stab at everything that surprises me. Going back to what I was originally saying, we made it through the break without any flashbacks, panic attacks or other similar events. When we went back to English class, the spider was still there. A part of me, one just on the borderline of rational and irrational, found it kind of cute, but the more irrational part of my brain was still scared of it. It would probably have been even worse for some other alters, the ones with more spider related trauma. Luisa for example would probably be the most scared. What would I be scared by? Oh, nothing. She didn't have to know about the spider. Spider? I don't like spiders. Well schist. Against my will, I looked towards Piper's side of the table. Instantly, a wave of fear crashed over me. Suddenly, this tiny spider (and it was tiny. If you scaled a small apartment down to match a spider, it would fit into a bottle cap. Sorry, I have to make everything about architecture) was a terrible monster. I pulled my blanket over my head. Wait, there was no blanket. Nothing to protect me from this beast. If I'm being honest, one of the worst things about littles were their really intense emotions. "Annabeth, are you alright?" Piper asked. "S-sp-spider" was all I got out. I think I have never said any word in such a stereotypical girly way. Piper grabbed her (luckily empty) pencil sharpener, opened it and put it over the spider. "Annabeth, and I'm guessing someone else is there too…" "Probably Luisa" "Annabeth, Luisa, look. The spider is trapped. It can't attack you anymore. You are safe. There is no need to be scared. You are safe. You can calm down. Don't worry. Nothing can happen." Slowly, my fear began to weaken again. "Okay, what just happened?" "I was just thinking about how I was scared of the spider but others might be far more scared, specifically the alters who hold trauma related to spiders. The only such alter I could think of was Luisa, and just me being aware of this apparently triggered her to be co-con. Once that happened, she had enough control to use our eyes and once she saw the spider, she was absolutely terrified and that emotion was transferred to me. I'll be honest, if you hadn't captured it, we would probably have either hidden behind our shirt, which would have probably looked ridiculous and stretched the shirt, or we would have run out of the room. Considering my typical reaction time, fear threshold and running speed, I would have probably collided head on with our teacher walking into the room. Speaking of the teacher, I think she just started the lesson" "We should probably pay attention to her now" "We probably should"