Dealing with Drama

Despair in Darkness

AN: The advantages of having a joint family system as I have with twenty-five family members living under one roof? The younger ones have unlimited teachers. I just spent the entire morning teaching Lace (my six-year junior girlfriend, who also happens to be my cousin) the quantum mechanics model of the atom because she was trying to apply the Rutherford-Bohr model in her college assignment, because she skipped higher chemistry.

Time: Same Time

Percy broke out of the trance, feeling somehow.... different.

He was alive, more than before. Raw, unadulterated energy coursed through his veins, as if he had just had several cups of coffee.

Not only that, he felt at home with the insanity infesting his shattered mind. It was a part of him, in the same way, his Poseidon powers and weapons were.

His eyes were closed, and he intended to keep it that way. He had no intention of dealing with the world right then. He concentrated on the pressure behind his eyes, the pounding headache threatening to come on, the hunger in his stomach. He concentrated on anything to keep him anchored to reality.

The water of the ocean felt cool, and soothing against his skin, gently pushing him about by the force of the waves. The searing heat of the sun was gone, leaving darkness all around him. He felt the soft sand and rough coral beneath his bare feet and legs as he sat cross-legged on the ocean bed. Small fish still flocked around him, lightly pecking his skin to make him stir. The shark was still there, it's scales smooth, soft and cool against his skin, as it brushed up against him, seemingly asleep. It's limp body gently swayed in the water, slightly moving about.

He reflected on Annabeth's words.

The fifteenth Olympian. He wondered what he would have to do as an Olympian. Judging from what he had heard, not much. Just attend some council meetings or shouting matches, whichever your preferred, every now and then.

The God of Heroes, War, Darkness, Fear, Horror, Nightmares, Insanity and Time. He assumed it was apt.

The time domain was probably from killing Kronos, he reasoned. But that was not the main reason he found himself in such a pickle.

The darkness in his mind purred with joy at the domains he had received. Percy just hoped he wouldn't turn into an Ares 2.0.

He felt despair. His heart sunk lower and lower the more he thought. Godly domains were a representation of who you were. Despite the thick, and almost impenetrable mask he wore, now, everyone would know who he was really. His friends.... Artemis, Thalia, Hestia, his sisters, Calypso, Piper, the Hunters, Reyna, Rachel..... all the girls in his harem, Apollo, his own father, Poseidon, Chiron, everyone would abandon him.

He knew, and had seen how the Dark Gods- Eris, Nemesis, Thanatos, even Hades, the like- were treated and shunned.

Annabeth's words rang in his mind.

She would not be able to influence anybody, true. But she was living in an eternal party, everybody mourned her, he grieved her loss.

He wanted to be with her, for her to hold him in her arms, and make all his worries go away. She had said that she would always be by his side. Now, she was gone.

The fact that she was watching from the Isles of Blest did not comfort him. She had wrapped everything up, just been cut off from the rest of the world, leaving Percy hanging by a thread.