Annabeth
When I woke up, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the smoke detector was no longer turning the room into a trigger. I had some memory of telling Annie to do something about it but, due to terrible communication, had no idea whether 1) She had done so 2) She had even heard me or 3) I had actually done that or it had been a dream. Memories and experiences relayed through co-conning were always a bit blurry, which made them very similar to how you'd remember a dream, so I sometimes had trouble knowing whether I had dreamt or co-consciously observed an event. Sometimes this DID thing could be really annoying but without it, I'd probably be a complete emotional wreck (even more than I already was) so I probably had no right to complain. I looked over and saw that Piper was still asleep just as adorably as she had been two days ago. I decided to let her sleep. I wondered what she was dreaming about (How did I know she was dreaming I hear you asking? Her eyes were moving. It's called REM. That's how I knew) Maybe Aphrodite was making her dream about Jason so she wouldn't have time for me. Maybe it wasn't working and Piper was dreaming about me. Who knew? If I had still been asleep, I might have tried to find and enter her dream to find out, but unfortunately, I was awake now. Also, there was no guarantee that I'd actually be able to find Piper's dream. I had a feeling that I was really good at that, but I had never tried it with her. The only person whose dreams I had ever tried to find was Percy, with the help of the Hypnos cabin. It had worked. Eventually, after many failures and awkward experiences. Let's just say I know a lot more about where Percy comes from than I ever wanted to know. I almost let that encourage stop my endeavors. Almost. At that point, Percy had been gone for over four months and I was getting truly desperate. That entire time had been very emotionally difficult and I believe if the order of things had been reversed, with Percy disappearing a few days after Tartarus… I might not have made it, whatever that means. I might have died from sodium deficiency due to losing it all to tears. Luckily, Percy had been with me after Tartarus so the time after it had only been mildly unbearable. I was so lucky that the fates had organized my life in that order.
Piper began waking up. " 'morning Annabeth. Uh, are you Annabeth?" "Yes, thanks for asking." "No problem. All your alters deserve recognition and to not be ignored." I didn't really show it, but I loved when people said affirmative things like that. This didn't apply to compliments since I already knew how great I was and didn't need other people to tell me. It was more for affirmations that I deserved certain things or that people would be there for me when I needed them. For me, this had unfortunately been the exception, not the norm. So yeah, that's what I like. I'm guessing I just crave the things I never had. That also goes for physical touch, sometimes I can't get enough of that schist. Nothing sexual of course, that's completely out of the question (except maybe for Percy), but otherwise I loved it, which made for a very interesting contrast, similar to the low-expectation-high-self-esteem contrast I've already talked about. "Annabeth, are you alright?" "Yes, I was just psychoanalyzing my reaction to your last statement." "You like that, don't you?" "How'd you tell" "You've been smiling ever since I said it, it's only a small and subtle smile, but enough for me to notice. I'm just good with noticing emotions." "That makes you really good at helping me with… I was going to say trauma, but it actually helps every time I'm sad or not alright. Your charm speak of course also helps. I'm really lucky to have you as a friend. Not sure what I'd do without you, especially now that I'm separated from Percy. That sucks.
Speaking of Percy being gone, what happened yesterday? The last thing I remember is sitting in Percy lap and him being so warm and it was just so comfy. Then I must have switched. I'm also relatively sure we saw the smoke detector at some point, but that was kind of obvious considering the fact that we're here now." "Okay so you and Percy spent some more time cuddling in this warm air bubble and then we eventually decided to also go back to school. Percy followed us to the entrance and then left. Annie handled that pretty well, maybe she doesn't have as strong of abandonment issues as you. Annie then stayed at the front until the very end of the day. She was the one who went to bed" "How did you handle dinner?" "Annie did a pretty good job of acting your age. Well, she did tell everyone that Percy used a cat to teleport" "Well, it's the truth. Stop looking at me like that, it's not my fault she did that. You can go complain to Luke and Thalia, they raised her. Well, you obviously can't complain to Luke because…" I had a feeling that bringing up Luke hadn't been so smart. Suddenly, four words started echoing through my head. "Family Luke, you promised", my last words to him before he- no, don't think about it. Focus on what is happening now. I looked at Piper. "You need help?" I nodded. Luke's body was on the floor, my knife still in his side. "Can you, like, run your hands over my arms? Maybe use your fingers. The more I feel the better. Piper didn't hesitate one second to do what I had suggested. I focused on the touch of her fingers on my skin as Luke began dying in front of me. I slowly came back to being stable in the real world and present. Once I was secured, I shook of Piper's hand and we went to a hug. After a few minutes, I was able to let go again. "Annabeth, this is the second day in a row where you're talking about emotionally difficult stuff before breakfast." "It's not like I'm doing this on purpose, but yeah, maybe we should go there."
We didn't really talk during breakfast. I really didn't want to talk about what had happened and maybe risk a panic attack or emotional meltdown in front of the entire school. Also, before I met (and built trust with) Percy, I had been bottling up all of my trauma for years, so carrying this with me throughout breakfast should be no problem. After breakfast, we went right back to my room so I could be traumatized in peace. "Do you maybe want to call Percy?" "I could. He'll probably want to know if I arrived here safely." I got the diamond prism from my bag and positioned it correctly before calling Percy. When the connection was established, I saw Percy sitting at his desk, probably doing homework. I decided not to interrupt him. Instead I turned to Piper. "Then I guess I can continue having emotions now. I think we were at the part where we let go after holding each other for a while." "That is indeed where we left off. Do you want to tell me what happened?" "I can try." I tossed a look to the rainbow. Percy was watching, but not saying anything. "I just barely scraped past a flashback, but you helped me ground again. It was of the battle of Manhattan. The final morning, Luke's death." "I get it, losing a loved one, not implying that there was anything between you two other than family bonds, is always hard. But it gets better." "You don't have to tell me anything about handling grief. I've seen my first death at not even eight years. I've lost so many people over my life, either through abandonment or death, that I could even list all of them. That's how traumatized I am. In other words: Don't site the deep trauma to me witch, I was there when it was created." "That statement was just so out of context…" Percy commented. "Oh, hi Percy. Didn't even notice you there." "How did you not notice me. You were the one that called me." "Yes, I guess I did that. But you didn't notice me at first. And then I didn't notice you noticing me." "How do you always win these kinds of discussions?" "I'm always right." "No you're not. Just very often. But not always. So, how's it going?" "Not bad, regarding the circumstances. Very bad when you don't regard the circumstances. Like I said, I almost had a flashback and then completely repressed the emotions for like twenty minutes, which probably didn't help it." "Don't you remember what you learned in the temple of fear?" "Something about not suppressing my emotions?" "Correct" "Well, I can't just have a breakdown in front of the entire school. By the way, what did you learn from that?" "That I'm way gayer for you than I previously thought." "Uh Piper?" "Yes Percy" "Stop stealing my girlfriend" "I'll do my very best. But I can't guarantee for anything, especially not when I'm as drunk as Friday." "In that case I'll let it slide. I tend to be very forgiving of anything done under the influence. Maybe that's just a coping mechanism." I knew what Percy was talking about. The human mind had trouble accepting that it was hated, so it would come up with excuses. For example, Percy believed that when drunken people did bad things, it was only because they were drunk, not because they were bad people. This believe probably came from the necessity to somehow process the hatred Percy had received from Gabe. He had achieved that by telling himself that Gabe didn't actually hate him and only acted the way he did because of the alcohol. I knew he wouldn't be able to talk about that, so here it is from me.
"The problematic part would probably be accepting that you were drunk in the first place. Why would you voluntarily put yourself at risk of becoming like Gabe?" There it was again: the post Gabe silence. I knew we wouldn't hear anything from him for about two minutes. He usually didn't have problems with talking about trauma- well, of course it was causing him flashbacks and- let me rephrase that: Percy usually didn't have problems with people hearing about his trauma, at least not as much as me, or Piper, or Nico, or Leo, or most other people I knew, but for some reason, smelly Gabe was different. Only in our most intimate moments (and I mean that emotionally, not whatever else you might think) had I gotten anything more than one or two sentences out of him. Of course I hadn't pressure him to say anything, I just asked him and the atmosphere did the rest. Maybe I'll tell that story when I have more time.
"Then I guess it's back to processing my trauma. This was basically the maximum of my trust issues. Well, maybe not the exact maximum because it was after 'don't I get…'" I looked at Percy. "A kiss for good luck? It's kind of tradition, right?" "Exactly that moment. That's when my feeling that people cared about me came back, but Luke worked against that again, so his death was like a second minimum on my trust graph like you'd get for x^4-x^2" "Please Annabeth, it's too early for maths" "maybe .1x for creating a small difference between the two minimums. Otherwise they have the exact same value, meaning there's no clear absolute minimum and I don't like that." "Annabeth, I've known you for four years, but you still surprise me with the weird things you have preferences for." "Well, saying that there were two points of identical trust issue level, especially ones that were both minimal values, just wouldn't be correct. So having a preference there is not weird at all." "If you say so wise girl. So, why'd you call?" "Partially because I wanted to keep you updated, partially because Piper thought, and I agreed, that having you here would be good, considering my mental state at that time. Well, not only at that time, because it's still terrible." "Well, if I could give you a hug right now, I would." This statement actually helped more than one would think. While physical contact and affection was great, Just the knowledge that someone cared about me and was willing to hug me helped quite a bit. "I could pass Percy's hug on to you, if you want" "Absolutely" with Piper holding me and both talking to me, I was able to feel okay again rather quickly. I used my sleeve to wipe a few tears off my face. "So, apart from your trauma, is there anything else that I should know about?" "Well, we saw each other like sixteen hours ago, so there isn't really much to tell you about. How did you get back to your school, by the way?" "I took blackjack. He's actually a lot faster in the rain" "really?, I've never noticed that" "Well, the rain makes him more slippery, so flying faster in the rain isn't really a good idea, unless all passengers are children of Poseidon. So Blackjack can fly faster in the rain, but only does so when I'm the only one on board" "Makes sense. Otherwise, how's it going at your school?" "Well, I'm basically at the top of the student hierarchy, at least when it comes to bullying, which means everyone has to be nice. From what my classmates have told me, the entire atmosphere is way less toxic than before I came. Metaphorically speaking of course, there wasn't actually a toxic atmosphere. Though now that I think about it, the amount of trash that used to be everywhere probably didn't exactly improve the quality of the air." "Used to?" "Yes, there was trash everywhere but that's nothing a little tidal wave can't fix." "So you're telling me that you just summoned water over the entire school and used that to collect trash?" "I did it when no one was looking. The most public showcase of my powers was when I made the rain on a tree collect into one big drop and steered that right into the neck of someone refusing to pick up his trash." "Grover would be proud. Except he would have probably picked it up himself to eat it." "True. Speaking of people in our schools, do people still think you two are dating?" "No, I think you made my relationship status very clear when you showed up here two days ago." "Here's the thing" Piper said "You might have created a new rumor, namely that her boyfriend is a god. I don't think they're being serious about it, but they still mention it every once in a while." "They really say that about me? Well, I think I heard something like that yesterday. To be fair, they're only halfway wrong. Now the question is whether their belief is strong enough to keep them from disrespecting me?" "Good question." "Maybe we should ask some mortal moms about how their relationship affected them" Piper suggested. "The problem with that is that mortal moms have this annoying tendency to be dead. And if they're not dead, they've gone insane." "Hey, my mom's completely fine. Maybe a bit traumatized from Gabe and me constantly risking my life, but all in all, she's neither dead nor insane. So maybe I could ask her later, though she probably didn't tell people about her relationship. I'll still ask her though. I gotta get back to my homework now, if that's okay with you." "Yeah, I've recovered enough. See you later. Bye" "Bye" I picked up the prism and the Iris message disappeared.
"Did you really just say 'I've recovered enough' to let him know the conversation was over?" "No, I said that to let him know that my mental well-being wasn't so endangered that it had a higher priority than his homework. That's something completely different. Maybe that just has to do with my issues regarding not prioritizing myself or expecting others to do so. But I don't think it does. Like, I don't currently have anything I'd need him for, so I can let him do what he needs to do. Also, just seeing him through the Iris message just isn't the same as having him here. If he was physically here and wanted to leave to do his homework, I wouldn't like that" "I noticed that on his first day of school" "But if it's just an Iris message, I have no problem with it. If anything, seeing him makes me miss him more, just feeling his touch on me, the warmth of his body… I wonder how Calypso feels about that" "What the Hades does Calypso have to do with that?" "Well, Leo has an above average body temperature, so sitting next to him and feeling his warmth would a much stronger effect than with Percy or anyone else. That is of course assuming he actually made it to Ogygia" "How have I never thought about that? Speaking of Leo's temperature, in theory he should also be immune to most diseases because he can just give himself like fifty degrees fever and kill everything." "Makes sense. By that logic, he should also be able to neutralize poison by making it burn up inside him." "You should really prepare a presentation for everyone at camp on how to use their abilities most effectively." "I already have such a list for Percy, but something happened and now I'm scared to tell him most of them." "Something happened?" "I don't remember what. Pretty sure it was you know where, and I have near complete amnesia regarding that. But he must have done something really scary if it made me this cautious. Considering that our survival is heavily tied to his power there's got to be a pretty significant reason for me to not want him becoming more powerful. That thing was bad enough that I should probably stop thinking about it now. I've already had one flashback less than an hour ago, and I have absolutely no interest in repeating that experience. I mean, your charm speak makes it a bit better, but they still suck."