I checked the time. It was almost lights out. "The school wants us to go to bed in a few minutes, so we should get ready" "Okay" "Are you not gonna complain and try to stay up longer" "You only told me to get ready for bed, actually going to sleep is a whole 'nother thing" In addition to that, she held trauma of which parts were based around her opinion being ignored, so not protesting her bedtime (or anything else for that matter) would be the "normal" thing to do, but I didn't say that. I could leave her in the illusion of not being abused by her parents to the point where she acted abnormally.

"I'll show you the way to the bathroom" "I already know where it is" "How do you know? Did someone tell you?" "Our communication still isn't very good so no, but it was literally the first thing I saw here" "Right, the flashback, I forgot" "I didn't. But if forgetting traumatic events was easy, I wouldn't exist. All of us except one wouldn't exist because there would be no trauma to create all of this." She gestured to her head "But since I didn't forget, I know where the bathroom is" I let her find the way herself, but followed a few meters behind, just in case (And of course because I also had to go there to get ready for bed myself). When we returned, we once again barely made it before the lights out deadline. It was a deadline no one actually cared about or controlled, but it was still a rule. When I turned off the lights, it reminded me of when I had been in a similar situation with Annie a few days ago, except that this time, I was with someone who had trauma directly related to being in a dark bedroom, so she'd probably hate this. Surprisingly, I didn't hear anything, so I checked. "Hey, are you okay with the lights being off?" "It's al- alright" Her voice did not, in fact, sound alright. "You sound like you're scared to death. Are you sure you're alright? You can tell me if not, that's fine" "N-no" Like last time, I got our daggers. In the darkness, the faint bronze glow was easy to spot. "Is that better?" I asked. "Yes. Thank you" Her voice sounded a bit less terrified now. "Let me guess; you were raised into thinking that your needs don't matter and people won't try to make things better for you, so now you just act like everything is alright because it's not going to change anything if you tell them what you really want" "You're right. People don't care what I need" "Sometimes they do. I for example do. And you need to let people know what you need because you're too small to take care of everything yourself" Okay, maybe that sounded mean and belittling, but I had a feeling that Luisa would like to hear it, given what we had talked about earlier regarding the big girl thing. "Oh, I can take care of things, I did for months, but it's nice to not have to do it" "As long as you're with me, you don't have to. I know I already said this but you can be as small as you need- no, as small as you want to be" "I think I like that. I think I also already said that. But it's true. I like being little" "Okay, do you want to go to sleep now?" "But I'm not tired" "Okay, then let's do something else. Maybe tell me about your dad. I only know Annabeth's perspective" "I haven't seen him much. I remember the spider attacks and the months after that, but I ran away the third night, so I didn't spend much time with him" "Only two days" "So I don't have that many memories of him." "Then I'll start with mine. If that's okay" "It is" "I don't know if you know this already from Annabeth, but he's the star actor Tristan McLean. This means that…" We spent quite some time talking about our mortal families. It turned out that we both had dads that hadn't been there for us a lot. Interestingly, this had led to vastly different problems later on in life, probably because the problems Annabeth had been left alone with were far more severe than mine and because I possessed charm speak, which created a world for me where my opinion was relevant, sometimes equal in importance to that of a ruler of some kind while Annabeth's had been deemed as irrelevant. In fact, my dad's behavior might have even contributed to me discovering my charm speak since the crimes it allowed me to commit were a great way to get my father's attention. Luisa deemed this theory plausible, but said that she couldn't really judge on that topic because she didn't know that much about me and my dad.

At the end of the conversation, her cute yawn rate increased significantly. "Are you tired now?" I asked. "Yes. Good night" "Good night"

I was standing on the top of a mountain. A few meters in front of me stood one of the tallest beings I had seen in my life: the giant Enceladus. In his hands were my friends Leo and Jason. They probably weren't dead, but they probably weren't far from it either. "Good job my, uh, I guess you're technically my cousin. And my cousin once removed. You're also kind of my half niece and half grand niece. It depends on- no, that doesn't matter. You have done well my unspecified relative. Betraying your friends must have been hard, but you did it for him" Enceladus stepped to the side, revealing my father, tied up and probably unconscious. "You know what? You can have him back. He served his purpose and once my mother wakes up, he'll die anyways. Though I doubt that when I release him, there'll be much left of him. He has seen more than his mind can handle and the mist didn't care. He'll never be the same" I knew that that wasn't true. I still had the memory potion from Medea, but I decided not to bring that up right now. First, I had to make sure both of us got to safety, along with Leo and Jason of course. What I had done was probably wrong. I should have told them about the trap. But then they might not have come here with me and my dad would never be freed. That risk had just been too high. Speaking of Leo and Jason, the former began to move. He turned to me. "You knew this was a trap?" "Yes" I admitted "Why didn't you tell me?" "I was afraid you'd leave me alone. This was the only way to get my dad back." "Are you kidding? You're my best friend. Plus I know how it is to lose a parent. I'd never leave your father behind, especially not if he's that famous" "Could you stop talking" Enceladus complained. "I don't want to listen to you, you need to be killed. All of you" He let my friends down "Starting with JASON" When they heard his name, the earthborn surrounding us began closing in, muttering obscenities about (and reasons to kill) a completely different Jason. They probably weren't very intelligent, given that their brains consisted mostly of dirt. Leo had recovered enough to roast a bunch of them, but it was no use. Eventually, they reached us. One swung his hand at me and knocked me out.

When I woke up, everything was dark. Was I still on Mount Diablo? No, the ground was too soft for that. There was also something covering me. When I turned around, I saw too daggers on a wooden surface. Slowly, the memories came back. I was in my dorm room in school. I hadn't betrayed Leo and Jason. Well, not all the way through at least. All was well. Well, not all, but every issue that had appeared in my dream was resolved. I checked the time. 3 AM. Way too early to be awake, but I couldn't exactly fall back asleep now either. I was filled with fear, adrenaline and other sleep preventing substances (I know fear isn't a substance- well, on a neurochemical it is- but that's not the point. After I returned from getting rid of one of these things, I had already calmed down quite a bit. That's the thing about adrenaline: it lasts like three minutes in your body and then you're back to normal. When I sat down on my bed, I saw something that could help me. "Hey Annabeth, if you mind me taking your teddy for the night, wake up and tell me" Annabeth didn't respond, meaning that it was fine. Fine, maybe that wasn't the soundest reasoning, but it was only for the night and Annabeth wasn't using it right now anyways. I'll have to admit, it worked better than expected. This bundle of cloth and filling made me calm down quickly enough to be back asleep in minutes.

Annabeth

These memory gaps were starting to get annoying. I was just at dinner and now I was waking up in my bed. I looked over to Piper. She was still asleep and I saw a small bear head sticking out from under the blanket. I was pretty sure it was mine. While she was still asleep, I began to get ready for the day. After a few minutes, her alarm went off as well. She woke up and turned it off. "Morning Annabeth" "Good morning. Did you have a nightmare?" "Yes, how did you… oh" "Technically that's theft." "At least I asked for it. Well, I told you to wake up if it wasn't okay but it still counts" "I'll let it slide. As I already mentioned, I don't really care about laws. If breaking them doesn't harm anyone and only brings benefits, why follow it" "I guess that makes sense. So you're not angry at me for taking it" "Not really. It looks like you needed it while I obviously didn't. It only makes sense for you to take it." "I needed it. You're absolutely right on one." "Want to talk about it?" "Yes, but not until after breakfast. I made fun of you for discussing mentally destabilizing topics before breakfast and I won't do it myself."

We went to breakfast. There, we talked about school stuff. Once we went back to our room, the conversation switched back. "Okay, I've had my breakfast, now I can talk. So, remember what Enceladus told me?" "Betray your friends to get your dad back" "Exactly. Of course, I didn't do that, I told them about everything. Well, in the dream I didn't and Enceladus captured the boys. There were also hundreds of earthborn and they really don't like people named Jason. By the time I woke up, my dream self was pretty much dead." "But that didn't happen in real life. You didn't betray anyone" I didn't say this to invalidate Piper's experience, just to remind her that there was nothing to feel bad about. I knew that that usually helped me when my brain was having some "fun" with what if scenarios. What if Luke and Thalia hadn't found me? What if Percy hadn't activated the thrill ride o' love's water system? (particularly creepy) What if Percy had let go of me instead of the ledge? (In my personal opinion the worst one. Percy had officially banned me from thinking about this question as soon as I had asked it for the very first time. Not in a how-dare-you-question-my-loyalty kind of way, more like 'I see that thinking about this is hurting you, so please don't do it') It didn't even take that long for Piper to be fine again. Honestly, if she hadn't been able to do that, she would not survive the demigod lifestyle. It required, and luckily also came with, a certain level of trauma resistance. Unfortunately, for me and a few others, it wasn't high enough, especially during early childhood. Source: I have DID.

Once we were ready, we made our way to our first lesson. We were both equally excited about it, except in Piper's case the excitement was 100% sarcastic. I didn't really understand what she found not exciting about the development of the automobil industry, especially considering how much math was involved in understanding everything that happened.

Nothing too interesting happened during this lesson. I obviously aced (yes pun intended) every question I was given, to the point that I probably annoyed everyone else with my elaborate elaborations. But hey, just because I'm not straight doesn't I can't try to get my A's straight, even if that meant annoying everyone. Of course I didn't annoy anyone, especially not my friends and family, to such an extent that they'd hate and in turn abandoned me and o gods my trust issues are showing up again. Luckily, many of my friends I was so important to that the aforementioned annoyance threshold was extremely high, especially with Percy, meaning that I could be as annoying as I wanted to without him leaving me. The worst that could happen was Percy getting angry, but then just the idea of letting his anger out on me would make him really cuddly because of Gabe. That had been a very insightful day and the first time I had really understood how strongly this particular trauma still affected him. Percy hearing himself raise his voice for just a few seconds had somehow triggered a trauma response that was at least partially responsible for a change in behavior that lasted for hours. Personally, I quite enjoyed those hours, but I of course wouldn't intentionally trigger that response because of the trauma associated with it, the same way Percy probably enjoyed spending time with my littles but would never trigger them out intentionally. Even when he had specifically wanted to show something to Annie, he hadn't actively triggered her, but that was of course due to the fact that she was already co-con from a previous, also unintentional, trigger and I couldn't know for sure what he would have done otherwise, but my guess was that he'd probably have asked for my consent before using a positive trigger. "Annabeth, are you okay?" "Sure, why?" "You haven't said anything for like three minutes. I just thought maybe you're dissociated or even in a silent flashback if that's a thing" "No, I just got distracted thinking about me being annoying, me annoying Percy, Percy's response during the Star Wars challenge, triggering trauma based reactions and why you should never do that. Well, at least I can't think of any situation where it would be okay" "Let's say you're under attack and you know that your enemy will have a traumatic response to something you can do, like for example the specific sentence said by the person who killed your enemies mom. Would that be okay" "Whoa, I wasn't even thinking about negative triggers, especially not if they're related to such extreme trauma. I'd say if it's a life and death situation and you know that a positive trigger won't work, I guess it'd fall under all is fair in love and war, but otherwise no. Only use triggers, positive or otherwise, as a last resort."