It seemed my insecurity had spilled over to Percy, which I hated. Of course hurting people felt bad because I was not a sociopath, but my constellation of trauma issues also made me a people pleaser. Either way, I had to do something about that. "Hey, Percy, listen to me. Sure, you might be insecure, but that's not a bad thing. Because every time you think you did something wrong I can tell you that I didn't and that makes you happy and making you happy makes me happy. Also, what do you mean by doing or saying the wrong thing?" "Well, I frequently insult you" "Percy, those aren't insults. You're calling me out. That's different. Mostly because what you're saying is the truth or at least very close to it. And I'll admit it, sometimes the truth can hurt, but you're not telling me anything I don't already know, so it's fine. Really" "Sure?" "Absolutely" "Maybe the reasons I think I'm a bad partner aren't so valid after all" Good, Percy was no longer hating himself. "That is correct" "Maybe the same thing also applies to you" "Wait, did you just pretend to be insecure about something so I'd come up with reasons to not be insecure just so you wouldn't have to come up with reasons for me to not be insecure" "Uh, maybe" "So you made me have the same problem as you so I would solve it for you?" "Now you're making it sound bad" "Because that is a top notch strategy for many scenarios. I'm proud of you seaweed brain" "A daughter of Athena giving out compliments about strategy" "Only the best for my seaweed brain. Speaking of seaweed brain, you were worried about insulting me too much, but my main term of endearment for you is a straight up insult. We're clearly past the phase where such things are even remotely relevant" "Good to know, owl face" "What happened to wise girl?" "It's not an insult" "Fair point. Don't have anything against insults. But you know what I do dislike? Changes" "Sorry wise girl" "Much better"
"So, what can we conclude?" Percy started. "Our respective problems don't decrease our ability to be a good partner, or at least not to each other. I guess that means that yes, dating is also for people who are struggling, but only if both partners are" "I can live with that conclusion"
Percy
"Piper is probably worried about us by now. We've been away for a while" "It's not even been 3 days, 6 hours and 12 minutes" "That's a really specific amount of time" "Piper asked me once how long you'd been missing and that was the time" "And then you had a bi awakening" "Not really. I had had that a while before also I was not in the position to deal with attraction. I was kinda busy with-" "Wait, is this gonna be another instance of 'Annabeth talks about her trauma, vastly overestimates how much of that she can handle, triggers herself and needs love and support from her amazing boyfriend who will never leave her side'?" "Did you say that last thing to make yourself seem better or to counter my abandonment issues?" "The latter" "Also it's not so much that I overestimate how much I can handle and more that I intentionally step outside my comfort zone. Very, very far outside. Fine, maybe I overestimate a little bit" "Is that a yes?" "Yes" "Then maybe we should find some place that's more comfortable" "There's a nice location here. I'll show you"
Annabeth led me through the school to where we'd had our fight yesterday. "Okay, I have to admit that I forgot this bit when telling you about the school's history. So, there used to be a football field here, but then, about a hundred years ago, a gas pipe leaked and blew up, creating a small crater. They fixed the leak, but at the time, the budget was too tight to fill in the hole, so they just left it there" "They didn't do anything to secure this massive hole in the ground?" "This was around 1910, safety wasn't invented yet. So, they decided to fill up that hole eventually. Over time, the crater filled up with rainwater and because the ground here has a high clay content, it didn't disappear. By the time the school had the money to fill in the hole, an endangered frog species had moved in, so they couldn't do that. They couldn't really do anything at all, which eventually led to this" Annabeth walked me around a corner and told me to squeeze through a bush that was blocking our way. Once I was through I saw what was probably the most beautiful place in the entire school.
Immediately, the grass changed from being tightly mowed to wild and full of flowers. At the end of the area was, as Annabeth had told me, a small pond, maybe five meters in diameter, though I couldn't see all of it. About half of the pond was obstructed by the hanging branches of a weeping willow. I kept following Annabeth across the lawn. She brushed away the curtain of leaves, revealing a small, shadowy area. The center was marked by the willows trunk, standing on the edge of the water. Next to it was a fallen trunk. It was stripped of its bark, so it couldn't have been there naturally. It must have been placed there to serve as a bench, with the live tree forming the back. "According to what I have heard, there used to be two willows here. Actually, you can still barely make out where the second one was" She pointed to a strange hole in the ground- the place where a tree had been uprooted a long time ago. "So, this next part is a bit strange and you have to remember that this was never properly documented. This is all filtered through many levels of hearsay. So, from what I've heard, one of the trees got sick. Her roots rotted away and her branches began to break from the wind alone" "Her?" "I'm just relaying information. This tree had a last wish. She- I'm assuming this is referring to a dryad inhabiting the willow- wanted to stay with her sister after her death. So when that day finally came, there were a few students who honored her wish. They stripped off all the bark and covered the wood in creosote to make it waterproof. And it seems to have worked out just fine. This trunk has been sitting here since the early nineties and still no sign of rotting. And look here. The live tree has grown here. It's looks like it's bridging the gap. From what I've heard, the cellular structure of the old tree is still in tact. I asked my biology teacher about it and she says that there might still be living cells in the wood. But all of that is like super irrelevant right now"
"Then what is relevant" "I am. This is one of my favorite places in the school. The dense branches create a feeling of safety, so it'd be perfect for talking about something triggering" "Or you could, you know, not do that at all" "If you don't want me to, that's fine. I won't then" "Oh, no, don't make this dependent on me. I'm willing to be by your side through anything you choose to do, just, be careful, okay?" "Relax seaweed brain, I'm just talking about something upsetting. Can you hold my hand?" "Of course" We sat down facing the water "I think the bench is meant to be used the other way, such that the back is behind you" "It feels safer this way, looking at the water" "Safer? That'd make sense for me, but why you?" "Probably because you make me feel safe and I associate water with you" "Cute" She punched me lightly. "Hey, stop stealing Piper's line" "I'll try my best. But like, you are cute" "I know. Ready for some trauma?" "Ready"
"I guess the story starts on an evening in mid September, after I told you a good night and went to bed. I was still thinking about how I had kind of betrayed my side of the Athena-Poseidon-rivalry for love, like in the movie" "You'd been planning to do that for a while" "Because you were my friend seaweed brain" "Exactly" "We're getting off topic now. The night went well. Normal, in fact. I got up in the morning, not suspecting a thing. I got dressed…" I'll save you the next few minutes of Annabeth describing her morning in extreme detail, likely to procrastinate having to talk about the hard part. "I looked over to table 3 and…" She took a deep breath. "You weren't there. I told myself that maybe you had overslept and finished my breakfast before doing anything else. Once I was done though, I rushed to your cabin. When I opened the door, the bed was empty. But it wasn't just empty, it looked untouched. You weren't there. I think in that exact moment, something in me broke. In retrospect, that might have been a split. I only remember what happened after that very vaguely, so it makes sense. One thing I do remember very well though is the emotions. So many emotions" I squeezed Annabeth's hand a few times, signaling that she was safe. She of course did it back. "So, first there was uncertainty. We'd been through so much together that not having you with me was sort of new to me. Then there was the disbelief. For so long, you had been the one constant in my life. The one thing that stood out in this world of change. That disbelief eventually turned into anger. I wasn't angry at you, okay, maybe a little bit. I didn't know why you weren't there, but whatever the reason was, that was what I was angry at. I might have gotten a bit out of control then. Chiron was barely able to stop me from mobilizing all of camp to go look for you. Eventually, something important happened. It had to do with the grand canyon. And Piper" "You met her there. Along with Leo and Jason, why don't you remember them" "Because gay" "Why was I expecting that?" "Well, for reasons I don't remember, I expected you there, at the canyon. When you weren't there, I think that was when my brain progressed to being simply sad about your disappearance. I did my best to keep it together until the quest had started, but then I lost it" When Annabeth leaned against me for comfort, I realized she was slightly shaking. "I spent the rest of the day just sitting on your bed, wrapped up in all the stuff that smelled like you, crying my eyes out" "And then you almost died of sodium deficiency" "almost. But then Jason came back and told me about what Hera had done, and I switched back to anger. And when I say anger, what I mean is… Let's just say during the titan war I learned a very important lesson that I was able to apply here" "What was that lesson?" "'No matter how pissed you are, trying to kill the gods is a very bad idea and tends to lead to a ton of trauma' Trauma was something I was trying to avoid, so I made the difficult decision to not destroy Olympus" "How would you have done it?" I asked. It was essentially a nicer way of saying "As if you could", but I didn't say that because 1) I didn't want to hurt Annabeth's feelings and 2) I didn't want to die. "So, shortly after I got Daedalus's laptop, I began working on getting access to all the big sites. Like, the kind of access that you normally wouldn't get. One such website I theoretically have some control over is Wikipedia. For the next step you have to remember that a gods life force is bound to their popularity or at least fame in society. By deleting everything on Wikipedia about Zeus and the other Olympians, their life force would at the very least take a significant hit. Next up, I'd try my best to decrease their popularity. I might fake some articles about how the old gods are a conspiracy and were never actually worshipped. If I get enough Facebook moms to share my stuff, the gods will get weaker and weaker" The sky rumbled above us. "This is all hypothetical!" The rumbling stopped. "Next up, I'd need some allies. The Aphrodite cabin would be a good starting point since they're willing to kill anyone and anything that doesn't approve of Percabeth. Once they're on my side, they can convince the rest of camp.
Next up, I'd need some really powerful allies that also disagree with the gods being alive. I might also give those an internet boost. Nyx might be an option" "We defeated her in like three minutes" "I don't recall that, but you're probably wrong" "You're right, it was less of a defeating and more of a running-past-her-and-trying-not-to-die" "As I was saying, Nyx would be a powerful ally. Throughout the myths, Zeus has faced many enemies. Some of them he defeated quickly, others put up a bit of a fight. But as soon as Nyx showed up, Zeus designed a new war flag" "A new flag? What did it look like?" "A white eagle on a white background" "That's just a white flag" "Exactly. Because Zeus surrendered. And this was during ancient Greek times, when he was at the peak of his power. Now he is much weaker since the once mighty nation of worshipping Greeks has mostly collapsed into a few cults keeping up the old traditions. Remember, when we went to Greece, the closest thing to worshippers we saw were souvenir shops where you could buy cartoonized statues of the most important gods. And if my attempts at diminishing those remains are successful, they'll be almost powerless and therefore quite easy to defeat" "Annabeth, you scare me sometimes" "Says the guy who tried to drown a goddess in her own poison" Another shiver went through Annabeth's body. "Anyways, once the Olympians are gone, I would of course have to replace them, or Nyx will put herself in charge, which would be kind of not so nice" "Eternal darkness doesn't sound that nice, I'll give you that. Maybe we should just… not kill the gods" "Wasn't planning to, this was a just-in-case thing" "Good. What can I say? I like my girls like I like… pretty much everyone else: not trying to overthrow the gods" "I think that's a requirement I can fulfill" "What about you? How do you like your guys?" "And girls" "And girls" "I've never really thought about that. Well, at least not about this kind of comparison. Let's see… Okay, I got one. I like my partners like I like my fireworks: nice to look at, powerful enough to theoretically help me in a life or death situation and nowhere near a certain part of my body" "Sounds like something I can pull off. The last part is kind of hard, but I'm getting used to it" "You're getting used to not having something that you never had?" "It's something that I expected to have" "I think we're getting of topic. I was telling you about the part where I was so angry at Hera that I almost wiped out the gods. I'm pretty sure that feeling was mutual, at least the cow manure in my garden indicated that" "That sounds like a pain to clean up" "I actually used them for a little project I was working on" "What project was that, a stink bomb?" "A little device that does something cows are already very good at: turning grass into methane. I built a little biogas generator just for fun. All because of Hera, who I was angry at for kidnapping you. But that information also gave me a bit of hope. Since an Olympian goddess was responsible for your disappearance, I knew you were in… saying good hands would be an overstatement. You were in non-terrible hands, so you stood a chance. You would survive and I would find you" Even though she was just recalling feelings and not actually experiencing them right now, she was rarely this determined. "And you did" I said. You found me" "Well, Jason remembered where you were" "But he only got there on a ship that you supervised the construction of" "True. You know what I always found funny?" "No?" "You and Jason arguing about who was the leader, as if that wasn't clearly me" "In retrospect, it was clearly you" "I just remembered a conversation I had on the Argo II once: 'Piper' 'Yeah' 'Our boys are arguing again about who's the leader' 'I think we both know who it really is' 'Who?' 'You' As you were saying, in retrospect it was pretty clear that I was the leader, but back then, I was a bit surprised that Piper saw me as such" "That's because your standards are so low that I cannot accurately describe it without triggering you"