Who We Used to Be

Chapter 5

Dionysus had been working with Percy for about a month now. It was surprising to everybody when they first started. After all, he wasn't exactly known as the most benevolent of gods, especially towards children of Poseidon. But it seemed like Percy had somehow managed to worm himself into even the wine god's frigid heart, and for that, the camp was thankful.

After the battle, it had taken a while for them to recover. Both camps suffered large losses, not to mention that Camp Half-Blood was all but completely destroyed. But slowly, things had gotten better.

The rest of the Seven took over Percy's role as leader while he was recovering, and nobody really objected. Not many people knew what was actually wrong with Percy. They had kept him in a private room surrounded by wards for the first few weeks or so. And then, when he began to recover a little more, they let him out.

It was torture, those first two weeks. Only Percy's closest friends and the gods were allowed to go and visit him, and only in small quantities. He could still sense the water everywhere, and his senses were always hyper aware of his surroundings, but he had really made an effort to get used to it. In a way, it was like he had gained another sense: taste, touch, smell, see, hear, and apparently, water.

He was scared of himself.

If he was being honest, it had always been that way. He had always kept a tight grip on his powers, afraid of hurting somebody he loves on accident. But in that fight, he had completely let go, and the amount of power he found within him that he had access to scared him.

So he worked that much harder to contain it.

Of all the gods, Dionysus, Hestia, and Hades were surprisingly the most helpful. They helped him to put a lid on his darker persona; teaching him how to calm down and deal with this newfound insanity inside of him.

But even with their help, there were still some days when the headache was too much, or when the frustrations inside of him bubbled over and he just needed to release. When that happened, he would go down to the beach and just... train. For hours and hours. Working out all his grief and frustration and anger about what had happened to him in the fluid motions of his dual swords.

Sometimes, he would find, his motions were so fluid, he physically turned into water.

That had led to a whole other side of his powers which he had experimented with and eventually mastered. Powers that he couldn't help but feel bitter about.

If he had had these powers during the war would he have been able to save more people. All those dead, Annabeth. Could he have saved them and didn't simply because he wasn't trying hard enough.

It was the low times like these when Thalia and Nico would just conveniently appear somewhere near him and offer him their support. He found himself spending more and more time with his two Greek cousins: leaning and relying on them more and more just like they leaned and relied on him.

Sometimes, they would come down to the beach and train with him. They would spar and explore new aspects of their powers together, and sometimes, on his better days, campers would find them joking and messing around just like old times.

It was therapeutic for all of them. And if Percy was being honest, the two of them were probably the only things keeping him even remotely sane.

During his recovery time, he had seen and hung out with all of the Seven and a few of his other friends from camp like Clarisse and Chris, the Stoll brothers, and Katie. The only one of his friends who didn't come to visit him was Leo. And he'd be lying if he said that that didn't hurt a little bit.