madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-that one criminal minds episode with the dogs in the barn-

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Teqi restrained herself from punching a tree.

She liked trees, she reminded herself dimly, and a broken hand was in no way going to help right now. Not only was she a twitchy scarred wreck of a quest member, who kept getting injured, now she had to psycho out on Piper to secure the mantle of loosest canon.

Tree branches creaked all around her in the heavy wind, dropping chunks of solid snow that fell and broke apart.

Her face was bitterly cold and she tucked her hands under her shirt to warm them, opting to kick feebly at a boulder instead of shatter her knuckles. They were already bruised from where they'd hit Piper's cheekbone, and she'd scratched up her fingers wrestling her down. The thought made her feel sick.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. She leant against the tree and let the whole body shivers and chills keep her grounded. FUCK. She sunk to the ground.

Teqi swung her legs back and forth, perched precariously on the edge of the banister. She licked the rim of her soda can and yawned, trying to bring sensation and hearing back to her ears after the deafening fireworks display.

The Hermes cabin really had gone all out this year. Or last year, should she say. Castor had been making 'see you next year' jokes all night.

She'd just been spinning in circles next to the speaker until the stars blurred and doodling on herself with glitter gel pens. Now she was watching the gaggles of demigods make their way back from the beach to their cabins, skipping and pushing and giving each other piggy back rides. The older kids were heading to the Aphrodite cabin so they could drink and drag couches outside to sit on all night, and Teqi wanted nothing more to follow, she could feel the infectious energy tugging at her.

She knew she'd be so good at partying. She fiddled with her necklace, spinning one of eight beads between her fingers.

A figure ran past, coming from between her cabin porch and the woods beside it, waving their arms and calling to someone else behind them. A clump of shadows between the trees turned into demigods carrying a body.

Teqi peered around the suncatchers and then jumped down from the railing into the strawberry patch, jogging over. She was disregarded, but she saw sweaty pale skin and limp limbs.

"You," someone said to her, glancing over, "go find Lee, tell him it's an emergency!"

She picked at her fingers, catching a glimpse of dark hair. It was the new kid, the one who'd broken the toilet block and pissed off Clarisse right before it was her turn for cabin inspections. They'd all failed. "What happened?"

"Scorpion sting, go, run!"

Deep breaths, she reminded herself. It was different now. It was different, right? Teqi knew she shouldn't have trusted any of them. She really hadn't known any of them for long, not that that had anything to do with trust anymore, and she hadn't actually trusted them, she knew, she just... didn't want them to die.

She'd tucked a jacket over Piper as a blanket so she wouldn't get cold, and all the while she'd been thinking about getting them killed. But Piper had cried, she'd felt guilty, and this was all before anything had even happened.

Which meant it was different, right?

It wasn't remorse, since she'd never actually betrayed them.

Teqi rubbed at her face, her fingers shaky. She kept breathing, feeling the adrenaline wear off and become an exhausted achy feeling in her throat and between her eyes. She wanted to cry and curl up between the tree roots until she became one with the snowbank.