SANITY; heroes of olympus

06.1

Andromeda nods absentmindedly, picking at the skin around her nails. "Yeah. I'm aware."

"Are you?" Jason snaps. "Are you aware what effect that you dying, really dying and staying dead, would have on all of us? On all of the people who have been influenced by you, by the lives that you've changed?"

Andromeda launches to her feet, wincing as her entire body screams at her in pain. She mutters, tight lipped, "Fuck." She braces a hand on her stomach, over the wound where her own sword had pierced her straight through. "Fuck. You know what? Fuck you, Jason. Fuck you and fuck the gods and the Fates and godsdamned Gaea! Fuck you all to Hell!" She screams at the world, her voice full of fury, rage, and endless, eternal pain. She was so...so angry at the world, angry at the cards that she had been dealt, the ones that she knew she didn't deserve. She glares at Jason. "You think I don't know that it would hurt people? You think I don't understand it? I do! I fucking do! Day in and day out I remember the fucking grief of losing my brothers, my mother, my friends, my...myself! I miss who I used to be..."

Her voice broke off. She dug her hands into her hair as her chest rose and fell, laboured as ever as it worked to supply her lungs with the air they needed.

"I want to just scream at them, scream at the top of my lungs, give me back my girlhood, it was mine first. I just...fuck. Fuck." She lowered her hands and looked at Jason. Finally looked. And she whispered, "They locked me in a tomb."

His expression shattered, and so did his heart. Shattered as he watched her break open the wounds that she had stitched closed herself, and watched as that always brave, soldier girl turned into a fragile, breaking piece of glass.

"Whenever she crawled into my mind, she locked me in a tomb and forced me to watch through a metal mask. I was locked in the dark, Jay, and I couldn't find a way out."

She could still remember it...the darkness that had enveloped her in the coldest embrace. She remembers hearing her own voice, Gaea's voice. The Giants, she could hear them, too. She could feel the goddess of the earth's claws against her mind, scraping, trying to find a way to the very centre. She remembers the chains that would wrap around her body, the gauntlets on her hands, and the mask over her face. How she had been forced into a kneel before Gaea in the chambers of her mind. How she had been forced to watch as her body was controlled and toyed with as if she were a puppet, as she was forced to raise a weapon against the people she loved.

She remembers feeling something rumble against the walls of her mind, like an army attempting to breach castle walls. Her head had snapped away from Gaea, looking towards the door, watching, waiting...

Dom had burst through, breathing heavily, eyes wide and feral with rage. And one look in Gaea's direction was all it took for the goddess to release her mind for the final time as the earth shook with a final release of madness.

Andy had stumbled to her feet, dragging her body and those chains that kept her bolted to the ground. She had stumbled into Dom, into her other half, and allowed herself to feel weak. With their foreheads dropped together, the two looked into their identical eyes.

Andy had whispered, "You found me."

"Always." Was Dom's reply. "But now we have to go, you need to wake up."

But she knew then that when her amethyst eyes opened, it would be only Andy...no Dom. She shook her head furiously. She mumbled, "No." Then she said it stronger. "No. I don't want to go back without you."

"You have to. It's time, Andy. You'll be okay."

But she had no say, not really. Not as their world went dark and all she could feel was blood on her face, a hole in her gut, a fractured mind, and a shattered heart.