Would you look at that? Another delayed Chapter.
"What happened? What time is it?" "Just after eleven" "That would explain why I'm so hungry. Did I really just dissociate away two whole hours?" "Not really, Annie was out for a bit. I showed her everything I could without other people seeing her. That was also what she wanted, by the way. She said she wasn't so good at 'masking', whatever that means." "Oh, that just means alters impersonating the host to hide the disorder." "Makes sense. I think Chris did that when I met him a few days ago, after I froze you." "I can't believe that was only one week ago. It feels like so much longer. Did you make any progress on those coming out plans?" "Not much, but what is there to plan really? You could probably work out a ten page plan, but people like me can make do with 'It's gonna happen and we'll have fun'. Also, I was making sure nothing happened to you." "You really do like me a lot, don't you?" "Sure, why?" "Because you were watching me." "And I'm once again realizing how incredibly schisty your life has been. Watching over someone when they're most vulnerable is just basic human decency. If you're romanticizing that kind of behavior, aka associating it with a very high form of connection among people, it shows that you have not experienced it from many people, so you think it's special. In conclusion, you got issues. We already discussed abandonment issues, but you also seem to have issues with your expectations regarding how people should treat you." "You could be onto something there. There really weren't that many people ready to protect me at my most vulnerable. There's you and Percy of course and I guess also Luke and Thalia back in the day. On the other hand, I've never really allowed myself to be vulnerable around pretty much anyone except these people, which circles back to me having abandonment issues. But can you blame me?" "No, not at all. Can you tell me why you have these issues?" "I guess it started when I was around five, when my dad remarried and- actually, it goes back further than that. It all began on the day of my not-so-actual birth. Both of my parents failed to show up. When I was brought to earth, my dad didn't want me, but he still, against his will, raised me. Fast forward five years to him marrying. Suddenly, his new family is important and I don't matter that much anymore. Not that I really did in the first place. After that, it didn't exactly get better. Eventually, the spiders came and no one believed me." I felt myself tearing up a bit. "Hey, how about we interrupt this to get breakfast. We've not had anything except some snacks and lots of alcohol since lunch yesterday." "Sounds like a great idea.
After finishing each other's breakfast, which was made way easier by the fact that we were no longer forced to sit two tables apart, we went back up to my room. "So, want to continue?" "If it doesn't bother you" "Not at all" "I think I was at the point where the spiders came and I wasn't believed." Just like last time, my eyes got a bit wet already. "I can't actually tell you that much about it, since I don't hold memories from that time. If I recall correctly, Luisa would be the one to ask here. Don't get me wrong, this is not an instruction to actually ask her. She probably won't answer your questions, she'll just have a flashback" "I already got to experience that on our first day. The layout of your room triggered her" "Right, back to the story. I eventually ran away and almost died in a variety of ways. Not many people were willing to help me, which might also have contributed to my trust issues. After being alone for gods know how long, I found Thalia. And Luke." When saying the name of my dead friend, the tear that had been lurking in my eye finally escaped capillary forces and rolled down my cheek. "They said they'd be my new family. They promised it" a second tear started to fall. "Do you want me to come over?" Piper asked. "Yeah su-" "I think I just heard something at the door. Sounded like a meow. Do you happen to know any meowing monsters in our mythology?" "I mean, Cyclopes (yay, more traumatic topics) can imitate any voice, so why not cats, but I think it's safe." Piper opened the door and a cat jumped into my lap. "Is that lil dam?" Piper asked. "Are you also using that name now? But yes, this is small Damasen" "Why not use that name. You know, just Annabeth's crushes doing what Annabeth's crushes do" "Percy is more than my crush. Also, you are less" "I don't care, I just wanted the name to be short." "Sure, I think the more important question is how he got here." "Uh, teleportation?" "I've had my suspicions, but this is the first almost definitive proof. I mean, it does make sense. He was created from dead bones, so he is a creature of death. Why wouldn't he be able to shadow travel?" Small Damasen jumped into my lap and laid down there, which was a really calming sensation. Within a few seconds, I was able to continue. "The next few years are mostly free of trauma, at least if you only look at the events that relate to me having low expectations for how people should treat me. Technically speaking, Thalia abandoned me, but it wasn't by choice. Now, the question is whether my abandonment issues cared about that distinction. Actually, that time wasn't that trauma (or rather issue causing event) free since whenever I wanted to go on a quest, they wouldn't let me. I kind of became used to the fact that what I wanted simply did not matter. This sort of treatment would probably have also destroyed my self-esteem if that hadn't been protected by an impenetrable armor of hubris. My expectations weren't protected though." By now, my tears were falling again. I motioned for Piper to come over to me. She sat down on my bed "I see what this is doing to you, if you want to stop and continue later, or not continue at all, that's completely fine. If you're uncomfortable, that matters" "Thanks, but I'll pull this through now. I can't just stop at the worst part. When Percy showed up, I finally got my quest. But once that started, it didn't get much better. I didn't want to go into the thrill ride of love, but I had to. I wanted to help get the fleece, but I couldn't. You have to remember that one of my best friends had found the fleece and we needed it to rescue another one of my best friends, so I would have had every right to it. Continuing on: I didn't want to work together with a cyclops, but I had to. At Nico's school, I didn't want Percy to go fight the manticore on his own, but he had to. This led to me being kidnapped and having to hold the sky. Finally, I was rescued only to watch Luke, my promised family, supposedly die. At the end, Thalia chose the hunters over me. Next thing: Percy came back from Ogygia after leaving me alone for over two weeks and what does he say? 'We need to get Rachel' Now Percy's choosing other girls over me? Then they pretty much, at least from my perspective, started-" I stopped for a few seconds. "Sorry, this is all a bit too much. I need a hug." Piper was more than happy to deliver that. After a few minutes I was ready to continue and Piper's shirt was ready for the washing machine; it was covered with a mixture of my tears, her lipstick and whatever else of her makeup had ended up on my face yesterday. "Okay, time to continue. Percy and Rachel spent a lot of time together and I felt like he was choosing her over me. Pretty much all my expectations had been eroded away at that point, but then came the turning point of my entire treatment arc: Percy asked me 'don't I get a kiss for good luck? It's kind of tradition, right?' This was the first time in ages someone had picked my side. Someone had preferred me over someone else. You can believe me, a part of me totally wanted to kiss him right then and there. But we had more important things to do at that time, like winning the battle of Manhattan. We eventually did get our kiss and everyone celebrated. Also, I've heard a lot of money was exchanged from various people betting on when we'd get together. Anyways, this one sentence showed me that my opinion did matter and I didn't always have to let people treat me like schist. With Percy by my side, I've slowly been recovering, but I think my expectations are still far below normal, as you could just see by my reaction to you watching over me. I guess that was it with my little trauma dump"
"Little? That was like thirty minutes" "But it was still only the fraction of my trauma that directly relates to me being treated badly or people choosing someone or something else over me. If I performed an exhaustive trauma dump, it would take days and involve a whole lot of switches, flashbacks and, most importantly, cuddling the pain away." "The last part sounds good, but I wouldn't want you to have to go through the other ones" "Agreed. And here's a secret: cuddling doesn't require you to be mentally unstable. You can do it at any time you want." I'm not sure whether this was intended as a direct suggestion, but Piper interpreted it like one. "I got one more thing I forgot to mention with regards to my treatment issues. I guess it's more like an abandonment issue thing, but all my issues are more interconnected than what Percy likes to call my princess curls anyways, so here it goes. It was during" I looked down "Basically, I was convinced that Percy had left me when I was helpless and blind. He didn't actually leave me though, but I think it still scarred me emotionally. It also, and I'm not joking, kind of made me want to do certain things with him, which was really inconvenient because at that point in time, I was kind of busy with staying alive. I don't remember much, but it was very dangerous and filled with monsters. Oops, that might have been a bit too much trauma talk." "What happened then doesn't matter. I gotta say though, that's a very interesting way of developing attraction. For me it's more like walking into a room and finding a guy hot right away. Or a girl I guess" "Being demisexual is a bit like being a demigod: you get a bit of both worlds and you end up being able to tell some rather interesting stories. I for example didn't have my sexual awakening until about a month before turning seventeen. How would you define a gay awakening?" "I'd say it means experiencing an unexpected and/or unprecedented attraction to someone of your own gender. I guess you could also add a feeling of 'I never thought I'd feel this way about girls'" "By that logic, the situation we just talked about could be considered a straight awakening. That would also mean that I've had my gay awakening before my straight one." "Because you fell into hell" "Because I fell into hell. With my trauma dump now being complete, what do you want to do next?" "I guess we could find a location for the aforementioned coming out party." "Sounds like a great idea. I'm pretty sure I'm mentally stable enough to leave the room." "That's kinda sad." "How is that sad?" "The way you said that implies that you're often not stable enough for doing that" "I wouldn't say often, but it does occur." "And that is sad" "Enough of trauma talk for now let's find that room. Have you seen my shoes?" "Nope, don't have mine either. When did you see them last?" "That'd be when I took them off on the dance floor. They're probably still there" "Hopefully. My clothes are probably also somewhere. I'm pretty sure I put them somewhere where I'd remember. I do not, so I'll just have to search then." We went down to where the party had taken place, where we were met by a pleasant surprise. All lost personal items where on a table, neatly sorted by type and color. Whoever had done this was either really nice and considerate or had something that approximately matched the largely untrue stereotypes of what OCD is. Within seconds, we had found our stuff and went back to planning the coming out party.
Piper first changed her look a bit because "If they know I'm gay, they won't hide it as much, making the gaydar work better. How do I look?" "Like an overcooked spaghetti" "How do I look like spaghetti?" "Because you're not straight" "That checks out"
She then took me to one of the break rooms where a lot of students currently were. "Okay, gaydar on" She looked across the room, then started going through the students. After a few minutes, she returned to me. "I have been able to detect at least eight closeted people, mostly newly discovered ones. I told you I had caused some gay awakenings." "I never doubted it" "Good. Don't underestimate my ability to gay" I was certain that wasn't a grammatically correct sentence, but decided not to bother Piper with that. We spent next few hours doing what Piper (essentially raised by her rich dad's assistant and pretty much only knows the super-rich lifestyle) and I (been at camp half-blood since 7 years old) considered to be regular high school girl behavior while Piper was still scanning the school with her gaydar. "Hey Piper, looking real good today" a girl called from behind. "Dam it, I've made myself look too gay and now the girls are hitting on me" "One question: how would you spell that damn?" "We've both spent enough time with Percy for you to know the answer" "I thought there was still hope for you, but Percy already has you under his seaweed spell." "It's just about the spelling of one word. Also, we're Demigods. We're all dyslexic, so we'd misspell it anyways." "Fair point. My advice would be just try to look a little bit less gay" Piper un-cuffed, changed her hair up and did about ten more things to her appearance that I couldn't even begin to name because my knowledge of makeup was approximately this: 1) Mascara is the stuff that makes your lashes look like spider legs. 2) If it says its water proof that doesn't mean that it won't dissolve in water. It will dissolve in water and run down onto your face. Once it's there, it will actually be waterproof. "Do I look straighter now?" "Like a spaghetti after ten seconds." "I'd say that's enough to make the girls stop hitting on me. But now the guys will start again. How do I look ace?" "Wearing our colors might help." We went into our room to come up with an ace style. "First, we have to decide the orientation of the flag. If we do it upside down you'd have the disadvantage of it only working when you're falling into the Grand Canyon head first or doing a handstand, but the purple stripe might be easier. If we do it the right way around, the advantages and disadvantages would be the same, just reversed. In that case we'd have a black hat, a gray shirt, white jeans, well, maybe not right now but in like two days you could do it, and finally purple socks." "How did you know that?" "Know what?" "You said I couldn't wear white jeans right now but I can in two days. How did you know that?" "Mostly just patterns I recognized over the eight months we've spent together." "That's kind of weird, but the kind of Annabeth weird I've already gotten used to. I just remember that one time when I was picking out the best baby names and it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I was like two days overdue." "That is indeed still in the probably-not-pregnant-range. If anyone should be worried, it would be me if I wasn't ace. I remember on the day Gaia rose, I thought I'd start, with the time delay accounted for. I'm still waiting." "But that would be like…" "Yup, I'm five weeks overdue." "That's kind of something you should be worried about." "But why? It's not like I could be pregnant. The first time we even considered doing it, I was already two weeks overdue, so no worries there. Also, don't you notice that? You know, morning sickness, wanting to eat popcorn with ketchup, and the like. I would know" "But then how do you explain the fact that you're five weeks overdue?" "It probably has something to do with you-know-where. I barely remember anything that happened there, but if whatever was there was able to severely decrease my lung capacity and weaken my entire body for several days, I don't see why it shouldn't also be able to mess up my hormones. In fact, that wouldn't even be necessary. This might even be intentional." "How is that?" "Well, I've heard that when a girl's body is in a situation where it might not be able to handle a pregnancy, it can just straight up become infertile until it is restored to a healthier state. One reason why this might happen is a significant drop in body fat to the point where growing and later feeding a child would cause the mother to starve. This sometimes happens to people with eating disorders. In other words, my body just stopped its usual hormone cycle to protect itself from pregnancy. But hey, that's just a theory based on information I got fromavideo I watched ages ago, it must have been when I tested how good the internet connection on Daedalus' laptop was. I just opened YouTube and clicked on some random video where that was mentioned. So again, just a theory. It could just as well be a hormonal disturbance directly from an outside source" "How the Hades did we even get to this topic. Like, that's not something you normally talk about" "I think we were talking about how to dress ace and I mentioned white jeans and how you couldn't wear them right now."
I'll be honest, I don't really know if any of the stuff in the last ~500 words was scientifically accurate and I basically just included it to show how much Tartarus damaged Annabeth.