Dealing with Drama

Racing against Relapse

Time: Same Time

Percy was frightened.

He had always been frightened, so far as he could remember.... as a child, as a teen, and as an adult.

Now that frightened boy- for he was nothing but a boy- had been given godhood, responsibility, and power.

He did not know what to think.

If Annabeth had been here, she would have made all his worries go away. She would have taught him that he was right, he was always right. She would have hugged him, kissed him, and treated him like an adult.

She never acted like he was a frightened boy, something which he was grateful to her for. He erected a confident facade, something which only she could see through, something which only she ever understood.

Her blonde hair flying in the wind, she smiled gently at her, her beautiful stormy grey eyes dancing with joy as she taunted him, telling him to get up and move on. Her necklace of Camp beads, matching his own, hung around her graceful neck, her arms behind her back as she teased him beautifully, swinging her well-developed chest at him. "See something you like?" Her soft, pink lips parted as she smirked.

Only she was ever allowed to see his scars. To touch his scars.

His angel. His beauty. His life.

Now she was gone.

Percy could not comprehend the information he was given. His mind shut down. She was gone, while he was immortal, never going to unite with her. He had been given a harem 'to help him heal', something which he did not want. He would have become an eternal bachelor like Artemis, sworn never to feel love again.

If she would not occupy his heart, none would.

Percy whimpered, hiding within the closet he had locked himself into.

It was dark, and stank of the dead. There were bloodstains all over the inside of the wood, and through the slight crack that he could not close completely, he could see a faint stream of light filtering in through, illuminating his torn and tortured body.

He refused to be weak. He would die fighting.

He was surrounded by monsters. Monsters who tortured him, bullied him, mocked and ridiculed his intelligence, kept him in the dark. Monsters who hunted him in the shadows.

He clutched a sharp, broken piece of glass in his hand. Where did the glass come from? He did not know.

He never knew what he had been doing the last few days, and every time he fell asleep, he woke up a few hours later from a nightmare, groggy and sore, with a pounding headache. Even sleeping pills did not help. Being a son of Poseidon, his immortal ichor just flushed out whatever toxins were in his system, making painless death by poisoning impossible.

He had tried death by hanging. Slightly more painful, but acceptable. His neck now constantly stung, a dark bruise on his neck.

His stomach growled. He had had solid food a week ago. And he had had water a week ago. The alcohol had run dry the previous day.

The various cuts on his body stung, the swelling in his eye painfully throbbing. His throat was parched, his tongue like sandpaper, heavy and swollen in his mouth. He touched his bleeding gums where he had lost his teeth somehow, the ichor his only way to wet his tongue.