At dinner, Simon, Matt and I sat at the head table with Chiron. We'd each been gifted gold laurels to wear around our heads. The welcome we received had not been what I was expecting. Everyone had cheered and congratulated us. A few told me I'd surprised them, and some said they'd known all along that I could do it. Tiana and Eleo stayed close by after we'd left the dining pavilion.

Chiron led us towards Fireworks Beach, where some of the Hephaestus cabin had set up a whole display. Usually the celebration tracked down to the amphitheatre, as I'd been told. But on this special occasion, sing-along and the rest of the festivities would continue on the beach.

The fireworks display was incredible. Hephaestus-made fireworks erupted in a variety of shapes and sizes, a trio exploding to show mine, Simon, and Matt's faces, followed by another trio of our godly parent's signs colouring the night sky. Terra led the sing along, which I did take part in. All three of the camp harpies came around to dish out some fancy looking deserts. Terra decided to open the floor to anyone who wanted to lead a song, but regretted it when Greg Giovani, a fifteen-year-old new camper and child of Hermes, planted his feet firm in the sand and began an hour long stand-up comedy routine he had totally stolen from a real comedian on tv.

In all honesty, as much fun as I was having with Simon and Matt, I just wanted the party to be over. I wanted to crawl back into a warm bed that was my own, in my own cabin, and I wanted Matt to send me into a dreamless sleep so I wouldn't have to think nor dream of this quest. It was over. That was that.

~

That week, every morning, Matt and I would wake up at six o'clock at the persistence of Terra and join some of the others for support group.

"Why are you still here?" One of the campers wondered. They hadn't meant it to sound so abrupt, I could tell by the way they sank into their chair afterwards. "I just mean, you don't have schizophrenia, right?"

"No, you're right." I replied. "I don't have schizophrenia. But I do still have a lot of grief to cover, and other problems to get over. Demigods are expected to be strong, always. Unless you have a label, like PTSD, or schizophrenia. But you don't need to always be strong. Even if you're just a typical, everyday demigod, it's okay not to feel alright sometimes. There's still a lot I have to do before I'll be alright. Sometimes it's good to just listen."

Matt grinned at me.

Terra, as new support group leader because of Caleb's absence, had admitted that she was better on external injuries as opposed to internal. I told Chiron I wanted to learn how to be a psychiatrist, and that when I learned enough I could take over for Terra. He promised that when school started after summer he'd enrol me somewhere.

Then, it was Friday. I had yet to see what we would do while the rest of the camp divvied up into groups and played Capture the Flag. Terra had told me that if I really wanted to, I was allowed to play, even if for my first time I would be mostly watching. She cleared me for use of a weapon and said I could start lessons for it on Monday. I turned down both offers. I didn't want to play that game. I didn't want to learn how to fight with a weapon. I was perfectly fine doing what I'd always done (though Terra told me I had to stop putting in my headphones and pretending most of my problems didn't exist, and to stop shutting down instead of talking about the quest and what happened on it).

At midday, Terra came around and collected all the demigods from support group from whatever activities we were at, and led us to the Big House. Matt turned to me.

"Capture the Flag. We don't get to participate, but we do get to help plan it."

"How do you plan a game of Capture the Flag?" I asked. "Don't they just go to opposite ends of the woods and try to... Capture a flag?"

"Traps." Victor of the Nike cabin told me.

"Special monsters." Amy from the Hecate cabin added.

"Fun times." Matt replied. "I don't care much for planning it, but technically it's a mandatory activity for us, and we get snacks. I'm not complaining"

"OH!" I smiled. "I almost forgot. Terra we'll be right back."

"Wait, no, don't—"

But I was already pulling Matt up the Big House porch into Chiron's office. He'd given me special permission to put the surprise in here, as long as I didn't leave it overnight, in which case he'd be forced to eat it himself. I'd gotten Tiana and Eleo to help me make it, and while Tiana proved an asset in the Big House's kitchen, Eleo seemed to be doing more of mess-making then helping. All in all, it had turned out perfect. A thank you, better than any verbal saying or purchased present.

I grinned as Matt's eyes lit up.

"Pumpkin pie!" He said eagerly.

"Not stingy though, there's cinnamon sprinkled on top." I added. The biggest spoons I could find (just small enough that I couldn't call them shovels) rested on the desk beside the pie, still warm from being baked this morning.

"I can't believe you remembered it was my favourite." Matt shook his head, taking a seat and motioning for me to do the same beside him. "But why make it for me?"

I shrugged, then began counting on my fingers. "You saved the world, you saved my life, you came to the Underworld with me, you survived a brutal kidnapping, you..."

He put his hands up. "Alright, alright, I get it. I'm amazing."

I rolled my eyes, still smiling, and we both dove in. It was probably wrong of us not to offer it to anyone else, and to eat the whole things ourselves, but I didn't care. This wasn't their we-saved-the-world pie, it was ours. And man, I never knew just how good a slice of pie could taste.

Only, as reached for another spoonful, I felt a familiar tingling in my abdomen, where I knew the cut had been healed. I cleared my throat, and slowed my pace, but kept eating so Matt wouldn't get suspicious. I'd check later, just in case it wasn't fully healed, or to find out whatever the Hades was making it ripple with a dull pain I thought I'd long since gotten rid of.

~

After finishing the pie and bringing the dirty cutlery and pie dish to the Big House kitchen, we returned to Support Group and a very unpleased Terra. Pain forgotten, we took our spots around the ping pong table to listen in, and offer anything we could to help make the game more "exciting".

"Fire cannons," Seth suggested, and Tiana grimaced beside me.

"No." Terra replied.

"Fire boomerangs,"

"No."

"Flame throwers activated by in-ground pressure—"

"How about we steer clear of fire-related additions?" Terra replied. Seth slumped back in his chair, twiddling his thick thumbs together like thinking of something other than fire had stumped him.

"Mirages?" Alia suggested. She was a small girl, maybe ten, and I hadn't noticed her prior.

Terra furrowed her brows. "How do you mean?"

"Well, um, maybe we set up silk screens, hide the projectors in trees, and project a moving image of the flag on it, for both teams, so they'll get side tracked?"

Terra mulled over the idea for a second before smiling. "Never been done before, unexpected, sounds like an amazing idea. We'll make plans and craft it following the meeting."

Alia smiled, content with herself, and nodded.

"And now, monsters. As you're aware, there are already monsters who reside in the woods. However, on special occasions and to ensure demigods are up to par on their fighting skills, Chiron likes throwing in more challenges. We have three options..."

I'd mostly tuned out, offering no kind of help. When I was sure Terra wasn't watching me through the corner of her eye anymore I slipped a headphone in and pressed play on my iPod nano. I didn't mind being here instead of running the obstacle course by the lava wall, but I wasn't particularly interested in picking a monster for my friends to fight.

Instead, I turned my attention over to my own thoughts, trying to answer the impossible question: what did support group kids do while everyone else played Capture the Flag? All day people had been nudging my shoulder, saying we'd get to see the special guest tonight while the other demigods partook in the game, Chiron watching them. Every single one also conveniently seemed to forget who this special guest was, answering my question with a shrug. I tried to badger it out of Matt, but even he refused to tell me.

"You'll just have to see," he'd said.

I wondered who it could be that could command such respect that not even Tiana would tell me who they were, who was so special I didn't see every day at a camp activity or at least in the dining pavilion. Did this visitor drive up only on Fridays, spend the few hours a game of Capture the Flag took with us, then leave? Was it possibly a ghost? If so, no thanks. I'd had enough of those to last for a while.

Since I'd been back I'd seen the occasional person dressed in white, not for very long, and not very frequent. I understood now that if people died nearby, their souls would reach towards me (specifically) with their dying wish on their lips. That was another thing I was working on. I'd purchased a notebook from the camp store and began writing them down. If I ever found someone related, someone they wanted me to pass a message to, I could. As of now, at camp, that was more of a dream for the future. When I went back for school, or later in life, I figured that could be a side thing. Y/N the medium? Well, maybe not. Maybe I'd write it in letters and slip them under doors. I didn't know yet.

I was shaken from my distracted cycle of thinking by that same, unmistakeable pain pulsing along my abdomen. So sudden this time I sucked in a breath, I saw Matt look at me through my peripheral vision. I turned my gaze towards Terra as if I were intently listening, hoping Matt would do the same. It was still dull, but definitely worse than the last pain. As quickly as it had come, the pain was gone, leaving me clutching my abdomen for no reason, but unable to move my arm away just in case Matt thought it meant anything more than me sitting like that to be comfortable.

Don't get me wrong, Matt and I definitely had come a long way from hiding things from each other. When we really needed to, we were our own support group, and the two of us helping each other out was better than expressing our feelings to the whole group and an unqualified daughter of Apollo. Yet we both were aware the other had secrets, things we weren't yet willing to share and might never be. Granted, everyone had things they'd never tell anyone else. This was different. Keeping this weird pain from Matt wasn't me holding on to a secret very important to me, it was fear holding me back.

Of course, a lot of the fear I'd grown to understand was irrational. Even though I knew now that my schizophrenia had been misdiagnosed, an underlying part of my subconscious maintained the whole Henry idea. That I was sitting in some psychiatric wing somewhere, imagining all of this, and that me feeling this pain meant that in my hallucination this wound had, in fact, been healed, but in the real world the cut was still there, this pain a reminder of it. I shook that idea from my head. One of the things I wouldn't talk about to Simon, support group, or even Matt was definitely that one voice screaming, even still, that all of this was fake. It was always there. It was something I had to learn to ignore.

My mind had conjured up some other fun ideas of why this was happening, though. Namely, Hades hadn't cured me completely, either intentionally or unintentionally. I was still dying. I wasn't dying, there was no pain, and it was all in my head. The list continued, albeit not helpfully.

And then the meeting was over, and I excused myself to go back to my cabin.

"Y/N?" Matt called after me as I started away from the Big House.

"Meet you at canoeing!" I promised.

I just had to double check, for the sake of my own sanity. When I got into the cabin I had yet to share with someone, I closed the door behind me, and pulled my orange camp shirt up if only slightly. As expected, there was no big wound, not even a scar. Nothing. I frowned, pulled my shirt down, and headed over to the Sound.