madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-hey girl will you sit with me? table in the back of cafeteria c-

She was fine. 

That was her mantra for the next couple of hours. Melanie Marteniz couldn't quieten the deafening repetitiveness, but she certainly tried. Teqi washed her towel, the one she had borrowed from Jason, she washed her sheets and her white, now sleeveless hoodie. She fed leopard. 

She made sandwiches for everyone and put them in the fridge for later, she painstakingly taught herself to make pancakes. She hung out the washing on the mast, tying it down so it wouldn't blow away, though there was no wind. She just needed something to do. She tried to read a chapter of a book she couldn't even remember the name of, but that let the thoughts of spiders and roses and snakes and burning babies in, so she put it down. 

She cut the heads off sunflowers and put them in a vase on the table. She put one in her room, one in the kitchen. She picked the seeds and put them in a jar, though she didn't know what for, she vaguely remembered finding out people ate them. She had to keep moving. She couldn't let a thought in or she would crumble. 

Will IM'd her at one point, he said he was on break in the infirmary. Teqi talked to him for a while,  and she was glad that the quality wasn't very good, because he would see the makeup she was wearing and the way she blinked so the tears in her eyes didn't fall, and he would know something was wrong immediately. 

She organised the infirmary, made Leo's bed and pushed it back underneath hers, she redid her eyeliner. She messed it up and threw the tube across the room. She did it perfectly the next time. Teqi tried to draw, but she ripped the paper in half and then burnt it. She did weights. She cleaned her knives. She brought the bedding in, made the beds.

Her Ipod went flat in the middle of 'lunchbox friends' and she plugged it in to charge. Teqi checked her watch, she had been doing mindless activities for three hours. She had a glass of water to quell the hunger in her stomach, it didn't work, but every time she opened the cupboard, she closed it again.

Annabeth and Leo moved to the crowd of sofas and chairs, hunched over maps and Annabeth's laptop. They ate their sandwiches, hardly looking up from their absorbing work. Only when it made Teqi feel like a housewife did she break out of her trance of mindless activities.

Piper came back on a Pegasus with two unconscious demigods. 

Teqi carried Jason and Percy one by one down to the infirmary. Piper watched her carefully as she carried Percy, so she couldn't throw him off the ship. Hazel and Frank looked after the Pegasus. If Teqi was talking today, she would have asked Frank to turn into a horse and ask Blackjack if Olive was okay, but she wasn't even sure if Frank could talk to other animals.

"At this rate, we're going to run out of ambrosia," Coach Hedge grumbled as he tended their wounds. "How come I never get invited on these violent trips?"

Piper sat at Jason's side, a glass of water in her hand, and a cucumber and avocado sandwich in the other. "Leo," Piper said, "are we ready to sail?"

"Yeah, but—"

"Set course for Atlanta. I'll explain later." 

"But...okay." He left.

"Knocked out twice in two days," Jason muttered. "Some demigod." He glanced sheepishly at Percy. "Sorry, man. I didn't mean to blast you."