Discovery (PJO/HoO ff)

What She Left

Percy

I woke, that day to the sound of my brother, Tyson, and my best friend, Grover. The same as every other day. They were doing the usual routine of trying to cheer me up in the morning. It didn't work, but then again it never did. They tried their best. They were determined and stubborn like me so, even as the year mark passed since I'd been like this, they continued to persist with the useless attempt to cheer me up every morning. I wouldn't say that I was getting better but I definitely wasn't getting any worse which, apparently, was a good sign even though I didn't feel any better. Since she'd left I had been treated like a child which was good to start with but now actually made me feel worse.

Later in the morning I went to breakfast. I'd got into the habit of eating late to avoid the company of those who took pity on me - everyone took pity on me. Everyone else was in training. I tried to do everything when everyone else wasn't, so when people people ate, I trained, and when they trained I ate. I sat at the Poseidon table alone for the first part of my breakfast, Leo joined me later on. He didn't talk to me, just sat with me and ate. He knew I needed company but I didn't want to talk, that I wasn't going to talk. Most of my friends had learnt that the hard way. I remembered how Leo had learnt the real damage she'd done...

**********

It had been the month after she'd left. Grover and Leo had found me again, passed out on the beach or in the training arena, (I really can't remember where, it had happened so many times by that point). I think it was dehydration that time, despite how unlikely and ironic a son of Poseidon getting dehydrated is. Grover had gone to get a stretcher while Leo stayed with me. He had dragged me over to a rock and propped me up against it in order to make it easier for him to force some water down my throat. He dribbled it down my lips and waited for me to respond but I didn't in the way he thought. I coughed and attempted to spit it back at him. You have to understand I was severely depressed at this point.

"Gods man, you're killing yourself!" There was worry and anger in his tone. Whether it was anger for what I was doing or what she had done to me I didn't know. Through my blurred vision I could see Leo frowning at me shaking his head slightly, "You have to get over Annabeth. Actually, I'm not giving you a choice anymore, I'm not going to let you kill yourself over her!" He poured more water down my throat, more roughly but still with concern for me. I accepted a little of it that time.

I took a few gasping, ragged coughs, the kind that makes you feel like the only thing you are expelling from your mouth is shards of jagged glass. I looked Leo in the eyes with the most serious look I could muster and hissed, "Don't say her name."

"You're gonna have to hear it sometime, so why not now ?"

I let out a cold, emotionless chuckle, "Because... she left me a month ago. After being together for 7 years and friends for another 4 years before that, she got up one day and left me. No explanation, no 'I'm sorry', no goodbyes; She JUST LEFT!" I looked down, I couldn't look at Leo anymore. My voice became a mere murmur "We literally went through Tartarus together, we watched each other almost die on several occasions and she still left. She did this to me."

"Let us help you-" Leo tried to put his hand on my shoulder.

I shook it off with what little energy I had. "You can't help me!"

That was the end of our conversation that day. I'm pretty sure I passed out again soon after anyway.

Eventually, after avoiding me for a while, Leo developed new tactics because he realised what I really needed; company, not talking. I, over time, realised I could talk to him, which I began to do, but it was never over her and when we did talk it was minimal. Leo was the only one who really accepted my silence and was the one person who didn't treated me like a wounded puppy.

**********

I shook my head and looked over to Leo. He saw me looking and looked up. He flashed me a brief smile before turning back to his breakfast. I did the same, minus the smile.

I'd hoped that that day would be a better day for me as I had got approval from Chiron to hunt down and kill the last remaining supporters of Gaea. It was a minimal task that someone younger and less experienced could have done but it was what I needed. They were reported to be about 7 miles from the centre of San Francisco and only 5 miles from Mt Tamalpais, which was a little too close for comfort. They were classed as minimal threat and were mostly quite stupid monsters - we were only being safe by going to get rid of them.

It felt good to have a purpose instead of staying at camp being felt sorry for. It would be the first quest I'd done in over a year and, no matter how insignificant the task was, it I needed to do it. The main thing I wanted to accomplish, like every other thing I did seemed to be for, was to take my mind off of her. I knew it would be easier said than done; it always was.

Grover was worried about me; he didn't want me to go because, when she left, after finally accepting she was gone, I threw myself into extensive and unhealthy amounts of training . I kept pushing it until I'd passed out from hunger, exhaustion or dehydration. It happened a lot to start with, someone would find me passed out in some place or another. Eventually Grover had people watch me, but I was good at slipping away. The solitude I forced myself into didn't really help me but I didn't want to be around people either. Grover was worried that instead of trying to get myself killed I would actually succeed that time, that a quest would be risky enough for me to achieve my 'death wish'. I wasn't trying to kill myself but the fact was that the more dangerous the task the more it took my mind off of her. But in the long term, forgetting her never worked.

I gathered a group of Demi-gods a couple of days before we left. Some were young during the battle of Manhattan in the second Olympian war. They were both anxious and encouraged by Chiron to be trained even harder to fight. Since the second Olympian war and Demi-god war with the earth goddess Gaea all Demi-gods had been on high alert for all monster attacks - in other words the closest to safety conscious that Demi-gods could get, you know, despite the dangerous weapons being used to train them and the imminent threat of being killed by some kind of evil monster...

I'd thrown myself into planning even though 1) that is not what I do 2) it was only going to be a minor attack and 3) I usually made it up as I went along anyway. I knew that even though there was a 99.99% chance that they were going to be very stupid monsters that had only survived as long as they had because they weren't actually considered a real threat, they may have been the potential spark to a new war - I would have bet my Drachma on them being stupid if I had any.

I got ready in silence, alone in my cabin- not many people had spoken to me all day, it was nice in the way that I wasn't being smothered - I'm pretty sure everyone knew that that day wasn't one of my best days, one of the days when no matter what I did I couldn't get my mind off of her, one of the days when I needed the perfect distraction. I just hoped it would be the distraction I was looking for.