Stuck Together

Chapter 1

((AN: No I do not own PJO, and I hope you all enjoy!))

Color blindness. A vision deficiency, or so doctors called it, where the affected person was unable to see certain colors. Years ago it was meant to be mainly uncommon in our population.

Mom would tell me the story at night. She'd walk me to bed, hand on my back as she gently pushed me under the covers despite my protests. Once I was settled in, she would begin.

It started around 200 years ago.

One by one, people began to lose sight of color, but not every color, specifically one color each.

Red.

Blue.

Green.

Purple, pink, yellow, orange, black, white.

It went until nearly every single person lost sight of at the very least one color. Those who lost a color like blue or red instead saw gray. Those unfortunate enough to lose the sight of gray or black had it replaced by a bright white or so I'm told, and those with white see a void like black.

Doctors scrambled to find the cause. Tests galore were done to solve the world round crisis, those who never lost sight of these colors were brought in for questioning, under suspicion for conspiring with or potentially being the people to have stolen sight of these colors. It wasn't until 10 years later when the world came to a conclusion.

Soulmates.

Or so it was dubbed by the public.

Upon the loss, people began noticing that around certain people, coworkers, neighbors, old friends from high school, the color would come back. People began spreading the news quickly until it was tested, and indeed found to be true.

It seemed that around the age of 12, children would lose sight of their one color, only to get it later upon meeting someone new. When these people were together, the color would return, it would only come back permanently once the two people had considered themselves to be together. Whether that be through marriage or some form of pact, upon a togetherness the two could separate and still see the color. The phenomenon was groundbreaking for about 100 years. Then, as the next generation who had almost always lived with it came into play, the craze began to calm down. Doctors still tried to figure out the suddenness of it all, but when nothing came from it and the rage towards the sudden change died down, the need for tests became almost extinct. No one figured out the reason even with modern doctors using modern technology.

Or so the mortals thought.

Mom always smiled at this part, gently pushing aside my hair as my eyes grew heavy.

Only a certain few knew it was Aphrodite. Having grown tired of the lack of romantics in the world, she caused a global wide illness to spread. The soul blindness the demigods called it. You would lose sight of one color until you found the one deemed to be your soulmate.

The gods would use this little trick to their advantage, using their abilities to alleviate the mortals of this condition whenever they came down to trick certain people who were hellbent on finding their soulmates. For those who simply didn't care and dated anyways they would do nothing. That was when the fake soulmate scare began, leading to many fights, some even leading to countries facing off against each other.

I lost sight of my color two months after my 12th birthday. I'd woken up and suddenly, when I looked at the sheets on my bed I only saw gray. The blue was gone.

I cried for hours, hating the world, hating the change. The beach was never the same, though I learned to hide my upset from mom who tried harder and harder to make my trips to the cabin better than the last. Mom attempted to cheer me up by telling me that she couldn't see orange, but that fact only made me more sad that she was with Gabe, the stinky old sack of lard who continued to beat her and I. Something about the realization that she had only ever put up with him because of me led to issues I carried for a lot of my childhood.

It wasn't until Paul that I'd seen her eyes glimmer in fascination and awe. She hadn't seen the color in so long. She'd looked around desperately once we'd entered my classroom for the meet the teacher event, then their eyes met. Paul had also been looking around frantically, his salt and pepper hair falling from its pushed back form and tumbling in front of his face. They'd even panicked the same.

They kept their relationship a secret from me for a while, but I was fine when mom eventually invited him over. I was honestly just happy she hadn't been soulmates with my horrible math teacher.

I'd dated Annabeth for a while. What had drawn me in was my curiosity. Were her eyes blue? She almost slapped me when she found out that was why I first was so intrigued and that was the day I learned that the Athena kids genuinely had gray eyes, not blue eyes. Though she, like me, hadn't really cared to search for their soulmate, or maybe we were both so angry at fate that we tried to force soulmate hood on each other. Don't get me wrong, I genuinely love Annabeth, but we both knew it wasn't going to magically happen, and Annabeth was always so curious to a fault.

I knew she'd found her one after a while. She'd confessed late one night on the Argo II that she'd been able to see purple a few times, and the most recent time had been at New Rome. She'd cried, repeating that she was sorry, and I held her. We agreed to split that night, but kept it secret from the rest of the ship. It wasn't much later that I'd found out that her soulmate was Reyna. They didn't get together straight away, but I was happy for them, they talked happily and seemed to be genuinely excited to have found each other.

I'd be lying though if I said I wasn't jealous.

I'm 25 now. I haven't seen the color blue in over 10 years, and I'm not sad about it anymore. I can't be sad for something I can't even really remember.

Now, I've come to peace with things. My life is happy, even without a soulmate.

I live at camp, I teach kids every day, I make big decisions for camp, I go on fewer missions nowadays, and none are world ending thankfully. I'm just too busy for a soulmate all the time like most people.

My life is content, even if when I look out at the ocean all I see are shades of gray.

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1139 words

((AN: Hey guys! If you're here from my other books and haven't seen my conversations board, I'm back! I want to apologize for my long absence, I had a bit of a creative drought, but I hope to come back with some consistency! 

Anyways, I hope you all are having an amazing morning, noon, or night!))