Princess of the Sea (Fem Percy x YJ)

5

Shadows danced on the walls as fish swam past the glowing plants outside the window. They made it hard to sleep, each one sending a jolt through my body, making my heart race. More than once I'd reached for Riptide. But as much as I wanted curtains to block them out, they gave me something to watch. 

I tossed and turned in the too-soft bed. Staying still was just as risky as staying awake. Whenever I settled, the truth would too. It would blanket my mind and push me down, down, down until it consumed me. Harsh words echoed in my mind with icy, phantom talons skittering across my skin. 

Lurching and stumbling towards the bathroom down the hall, exhaustion pressed down on me. It was the deep kind, the kind you had after midnight, the kind where your eyes opened just a bit more and energy seemed renewed. I opened the medicine cabinet. Empty. 

Of course, it was empty. 

Sediment and dust stuck to my fingers, making the gray-brown wood the same rich mahogany as the clear spots where things used to be. For some reason, I had the feeling my razor was missing. The medical scissors were.

All I wanted to do was sleep. But even that was forgotten as I stepped into the hall. Creaking echoed down it, flashes of shadow that I could tell the source. Mouth dry, my heart raced. My hands shook. I curled my fingers to keep my hands from shaking, as a whine rattled in my throat. 

I didn't want to go back to my room. 

I didn't want to keep staring at the wall and hoping that sleep would come for me. 

The cold doorknob pressed against my palm. All the doors looked the same in the dark. Click. Soundless, the door opened. It closed behind me with the same soft sound of the latch. Power filled this room, rolling and receding like waves. Curtains flowed in the currents, letting in light faint enough that it was hard to see. But I could make out the shadowed form of the bed, and the sleeping figure in it. 

Was I going to do this? My fingers fluttered. A step. Then two. "Dad?" 

Water swirled around me. Glowing eyes cracked open, blankets moved, and Dad sat up. He yawned and rubbed his eyes. "Sweetheart?" he said groggily. "Why aren't you in bed?"

"Can I sleep in here?"

The bed complained when he slid over. He pulled the blankets back and gestured for me to climb in. "You're lucky Amphitrite is visiting her sisters." Amusement lurked in his voice. Without it, the words would've felt cruel, and to a point they still did. He threw the blankets over me and brushed his hand over my hair.

I slowly shimmied towards him, until my arm brushed his. Like an exhale, the burning pressure under my skin lessened. I hadn't realized how much it had been building up, how much my powers were pushing against my skin. 

"It's warmer where you were," said Dad. I'd moved from his side of the bed to the middle, and the sheets were cold against my skin. Instead of moving away--back to the comfortable warmth of where he'd been laying--I pressed closer to him. He looked at me. "What's wrong?"

So many things.

"Can you hold me?" I asked.

"Why?"

"I-- Never mind." 

A strand of water kept me from moving away. Dad's shadow loomed over me. Tensed, I stared. I shouldn't have said anything. Should've kept my mouth shut and not came in here in the first place. But the hand he raised passed over me and he pulled me up to sit. Pressure on my back guided me forward. 

He held me against his chest, so close that his power wrapped around mine. An infinite abyss of energy, rolling and coiling. It burned at my mind, and I knew if I slipped under--looked past what the Mist keeps hidden even from the clearsighted--the energy around him would be bright and near-whole and blinding. My own energy and power was swept up in his tide.