Don't Fall (PJO FF)

16.) The Dark Secret pt. 2: Sadistic

That was my mindset for a while. I thought that if I died then no one would have to help me anymore and they would be free of this burden.

Things didn't go that way. One full moon the pack caught me with Gabe's knife at my throat. They talked to me for a long time about how they wanted to help me, that I wasn't burdening them. They told me that they enjoyed my company and that they couldn't bare the thought of me dying. I heard them...but that doesn't mean I listened. I tried to stop cutting but I couldn't.

It was like I was addicted. Every time I saw something sharp enough to do damage I just thought about how nice it would feel if it just ripped me apart. Then I gave in. I didn't last six hours.

Then I came here. I was better at eating and cutting less. I felt better. But then the nightmares came back. I found the one thing I was hoping I wouldn't have. I tipped over again and I hated life all over again. When the full moon came I was nothing. Everything I felt before just came rushing back and I couldn't handle it.

And that brings me to now. Sitting in front of my friends who are looking at me with different emotions, curiosity, fear, worry, and so many others. Will just looked sad. Nico seemed reassuring.

"So, my...secret...right?" They nodded. "Okay, I don't know how to really say this."

"Just tell us how you told Nico." Hazel smiled.

"Yeah, that might get difficult." Nico scratches his cheek sheepishly. "I kind of yelled at him to make him angry and just burst it out."

"Okay, so that's off the table," Leo told the others. "I don't want to see angry Percy right now."

"Well you're about to see sad, depressed, self-hatred Percy so be warned," I commented. "So, you know what happened two years ago, right? About Gabe."

They nodded. "He died. You never told us why but we assumed he drank himself to death."

I just shook my head. "He didn't drink himself to death." They looked at me confused. I looked them in the eyes and sighed. I suppose it might be better to just tell them the whole story.

"The day that Gabe died, I was very...emotional, I guess you could say. Luke had died a while before that and I was angry at everything. Gabe was still abusing me but it was less. He wouldn't hurt me as much because I already hurt myself enough.

"He had came home drunk from a poker game. My mom was out at the store, I think. He had came up to me and just punched me in the face. Back then I would just let it happen. I didn't want to fight back so I just let him do whatever he wanted. He punched, kicked, stabbed, anything."

"You're a worthless piece of shit!" he yelled. "You deserve everything that's coming to you, you understand?"

I didn't answer him. I stayed quiet on the floor in a puddle of my own blood from the stab wound on my leg.

"I said do you understand me!" He grabbed me by the shirt and punched me right in the jaw.

"No." I glared at him and he growled at me. He grabbed the knife that he knew I always carried around with me and stabbed my other leg. He cut me up all over.

"That's how I got this," I told my friends and showed them the scar on my neck. It was the deepest scar he left and my friends always asked me about it.