(Fem.) Percy meets Spidey

18

This is a bad idea, but what else is new? I tapped my foot as I waited for the elevator to open. Let's hope none of the gods decide to kill me because I'm up here uninvited. Finally, the doors opened. I stepped out and walked along the pathway.

It was weird, not going up to the council room, but no one would be in there. Zeus is probably off breaking his wedding vows right now anyway. I wandered through the streets of Olympus, finding my way from the plans Annabeth showed me. 

I knocked on a large door, made out of some metal, maybe steel? They swung inward and I entered.

Everything was huge. Tables, chairs, even the one vase of flowers. Now I now how Jack felt when he climbed that beanstalk. I kept walking. By the time I made it to the next room, I was out of breath. I groaned when I saw the distance to the next door. The floor rocked and swayed, I fell as the room warped around me. It shrank until it was normal size, for me at least.

"What the Hades?" I mumbled, rising to my feet. I shook my head, deciding against questioning godly stuff. I continued through the palace. After probably twenty minutes, I heard laughter coming from behind a closed door. I knocked. There was movement, before a voice said. "Come in."

I cracked the door open, not looking inside. "If I look, will I see someone naked?"

"No."

I opened the door. True to her word, Aphrodite had clothes on and so did Ares.

"Oh my me, you're adorable!" In a blink of an eye, Aphrodite was in front of me fluffing my hair.

"Why are you here, brat?" Ares glared at me. I don't know if it was because he hates me, or because I took his girlfriend's attention away from him. It might have been both.

I sighed and shuffled my feet. "I actually wanted to talk to you."

"You could've Iris Messaged."

"You would have denied it."

Aphrodite grabbed my arm and pulled me to the couch. she pushed me onto it before sitting beside me. I was stuck between her and Ares.

"What do you want?" At this point, his voice was a growl. Yep. Coming here was definitely a bad idea.

I stared at my hands. "You know a lot about PTSD, right?"

"I'm the one who said you have it, what do you think? If you're going to waste my time with stupid-"

"How do I deal with it?"

"What?" He turned to look at me. I only caught the movement out of the corner of my eye, I was still staring at my hands. At my shaking hands.

"I can't exactly tell my mom what's going on and Dad, well, he's trying but he doesn't know. You'd have the best idea on how I can handle this."

"Aphrodite, leave." Ares's voice was dead calm, completely void of any emotion.

"But-" She cut off suddenly and then I couldn't feel her presence beside me.

"I don't like you, but you're a soldier, or close to one anyway, meaning I should at least try to help you." He mumbled. "Having PTSD isn't a cookie cutter deal, I can't give you something that will work for sure. You could try talking to someone or art therapy or one of the other things Apollo is always going on about, but there's no guarantee that any of them will help. It depends on your mind and how much you want to get better."

I chuckled.

"You laughing at me, brat?" Anger seeped back into his voice.

"More so at the fact you're trying to help me. Never thought I'd see the day."

"Blame it on my Roman side. He likes you, something about you becoming praetor in such a short amount of time or whatever." Ares turned to look at me. "But you need to want to get better before you can. I'm not exactly sure you're going to be able to do that."

"W-what? What do you mean?"

"You can figure it out for yourself." He stood up and offered me a hand. I stared at it for a minute before taking it, I expected him to pull me off of the couch, not to teleport us somewhere. Well, I shouldn't say somewhere because that makes it seem like I had no idea where we were. We were standing outside my dad's throne room. Ares shifted his grip to my wrist and shoved the doors open. They hit the walls with a loud bang.

"Ares, I suggest you take your hand off of my daughter." Dad made no move to rise from his seat.

"I'm trying to keep her from running off. We need to talk."

"As in you and me or the two of you?"

"You and me, but she needs to be here," Ares said, tightening his grip on my wrist. Great, that's definitely going to bruise.

After a moment, Dad stood up and shrank down to mortal height. With a wave of his hand he dismissed the councilmen and servants, they swam away like they were scared of what was going to happen. Dad walked over to us and as soon as he was within five feet of us, Ares shoved me towards him.

Dad wrapped his arms around me in a hug. "Hi, seahorse." He ran a hand through my now short hair. "Your hair looks cute. Ares, what did you want to talk about?"

"Your brat decided to show up unannounced at my palace. I would've killed her, but she was asking for my help?"

"With what?"

"Managing her PTSD."

Me trying to write Ares as a tough tough guy but managing to make him into an edgy teenager who cares about kids.

Ugh...I just want it to storm already. I want to watch the movie I'm supposed to and then go build a wall in the woods.

See yah