3. Guilt
PTSD, the human called it.
I'm fine, Percy had lied.
It was a strange little standoff to observe, as long as you didn't look too closely.
Percy sat in his faded jeans and ragged old blue t-shirt, chin in his palm as he determinedly gazed out the window instead of at the human across him. His legs were sprawled out before him, ankles digging into the old, soft carpet that threatened to swallow them. The human was dressed formally but muted with her ankles crossed and a notebook on her lap as she patiently waited.
The school had mandated his son see the woman. Had it been one too many outbursts, an absence one month too long, the dismal grades, the apathy in his eyes; Poseidon wasn't sure but it had landed Percy in the oversized green chair in his school's counselor's office every Tuesday morning.
If you would just talk about it, the woman suggested.
I'm fine, Percy had lied, eyes fixed out the window as he let the words float over him, dissipating into nothingness, for that was all they were worth. He couldn't let them be worth anything greater.
Life's cruel ironies were not lost on the son of Poseidon. He couldn't just talk about it; he couldn't tell her the truth. He couldn't tell her about the horrors he had endured, about the depths of Tartarus and its lingering terrors that dodged his every step. He couldn't tell her about the friends he saw die, the ones he thought he could have saved (you couldn't, it wasn't your fault), the ones he held in his arms as they drew their last breath. The responsibility they had laid upon him since the moment he crossed the camp's border all those years ago.
Sometimes Poseidon wanted to reach through all the red tape that separated them, to shake the boy until all his insecurities left him, until he understood that he couldn't save them all, that it wasn't his fault, that he was the greatest hero Olympus had ever seen, why couldn't he see it too? He wanted to wrap the demigod up until nothing could ever touch him again, until he could smile freely once more.
I'm fine, Percy had lied.
Talking will make you feel better, the woman pressed.
Percy had smiled. They all knew he would feel better if he could just talk about it. They all knew he couldn't (wouldn't) talk about it. Help sat across from him in knock-off pumps and a three-year-old blazer but he had to turn her down. Like everything else in his life, like all the little and not so little and impossible to carry things that piled up on top of the son of Poseidon until he felt he couldn't breathe, he couldn't sleep, he couldn't eat, he couldn't, he couldn't—.
Help sat before him but Percy Jackson existed half outside her world. A demichild in every sense of the word. Half here and half there, yet never truly in either. This mortal woman couldn't help him any more than Poseidon could.
I'm fine, Percy had lied.
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