𝐏𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐑𝐀'𝐒 𝐁𝐎𝐗! heroes of olympus²

viii. looking-glass

chapter eight!
008. looking-glass

cain

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    CAIN HAD mastered the art of staying awake. 

    Everyone was scared of something▬he knew this very well. Fears whispered to him like voices in the wind whenever someone walked past. Bees, heights, spiders and small spaces▬he knew each and every one of them before someone even opened their mouth to speak to him. Secrets were opened for him to delve into even if he didn't want to. It made Cain feel as though he was looking through the window into someone else's home▬unwanted, trespassing and wrong. These things that people told no one, he found out even if he wasn't looking at them. His mind was never free of them▬spiders, drowning, fire, death ... They swarmed his mind constantly like a hive of angry bees, and Cain couldn't be rid of them, even when he slept. 

     One thing everyone misunderstood about the curse that his powers were, was that Cain didn't just hear people's fears▬those fears stayed with him even after a person was gone. He had to live with them, every single day and every single night. 

    (Even he was afraid of something). 

    That was how he managed to project fear onto others, because his mind▬no, everything about him▬boxed every single fear until it was boiling underneath the surface, and when he finally released it, someone else had to see them all. They had to hear the whispers, the screams and the laughs▬feel the crawling of eight legs and the red eyes of the monster under the bed, and it turned them mad. 

     Cain was great at staying awake, now, even when he knew he should be dropping from exhaustion. He was great at being on his own▬he preferred it. He was great at dissociating from conversations so he could block out every fear from every person he was with. He was great at not allowing people to notice. 

     He was still picking tar out of his hair, frowning at it as he watched the clumps fly away in the wind as the Argo II drifted towards Kansas. Cain tugged at the sleeves of his jumper. It was summer weather, but he was also good at not letting the heat bother him. Even when he pulled the sleeves as far as they could go, the midnight moon still glinted copper onto the fingers of his Celestial bronze arm. He stared at them for a moment, clenching and unclenching the hand▬and not feeling any of it. It was a strange sensation. The magic of the arm worked like a normal arm▬it reacted to his brain and did what he wanted, and yet he couldn't feel what it touched. Not really. Whenever he did feel anything, it was pain. Some days, it was a dull ache, other days, it kept him up at night▬moments when his head still thought he had his arm, and it relived the horrible pain that even Cain didn't remember. 

     For once, he was alone for the first time since they set off on this adventure, and Cain relished every minute of it. He took a deep breath of the night air and hung his head, his forehead touching the wood of the edge of the boat. He knew this was going to be hard for him. He was on a boat with nine other demigods and an angry goat, and each and every one of them had so much going on in their minds▬so many things they were fearful of right now that Cain felt he was in a room with double the number of people. He could feel the tension, the wariness they all had of each other, the way that Percy and Jason were walking on thin ice and how Frank was apprehensive of Leo. He could already tell that the team they were supposed to be was far from even the start of becoming one. 

     He was grateful to finally be away from them all. But even away, they still haunted him. It put him in a bad mood▬and he was second-guessing every hopeful promise that this quest would succeed. Nearly every one of them was hiding something, and that never forbade well.