I breathe in sharply, "And why would that be?"

Peter just stares at me in silence.

Then he speaks, "I'm... I'm a disappointment, hell, even I wouldn't want me as a child. Who wants a coward like me? I couldn't even tell him, even when I had the very chance too."

Ororo looks between us awkwardly, looking out of place, as she slowly makes her way out of the room.

"Peter..." I looked at him sadly, "I haven't known you for a long time, but I know you aren't all those things you said you are."

Peter snorts lightly, face disbelieving.

I had some experience with people like this, many campers had low self-esteem. Many people came from parents who hated them, or ignored them, and when they finally arrived at camp, voila, more people who ignore their children.

It could seriously cause problems in people.

At least Hecate had tried to be a good parent, helping him out in times of need, but even then, she was a goddess. She had more important things to do than to help a demigod who was going to die one day anyways.

Which didn't make it hurt any less, but was way better than what everyone else had received. Percy had made the gods promise to claim their children before 13, to actually care about them, and even swore an oath.

But gods were terrible at keeping promises, as seen first hand with the oath the big three made. And who would face the consequences of the broken oaths?

Us. Their children. Innocent people who had done nothing wrong. Who's only mistake was when their own parents decided to break the rules they'd sworn to in the first place.

And the gods didn't even care.

I wasn't a very good people with emotions. I had no idea what to do, except to sit there and comfort people.

I made better pep talks than Chiron though.

Seriously. His pep talks were terrible. You'd think a man with so much experience with children would know what to say to children.

He did not.

I look at Peter, sitting there so miserably, thinking so lowly of himself, and I wondered, were mutants so different from demigods?

Maybe they were, but then again, they were similar.

Both stayed away from mortals, tried to hide themselves because they were afraid of what people would see them as. Both battles monsters, both had (sometimes) shitty parents, and so on.

I placed a hand on Peter's shoulder, "I think, that if you actually think that you are the worst son ever, then maybe you've tried the hardest you ever could. If Helmut Head doesn't accept you as his son, then that's his fault, for overlooking something important. That maybe, we don't need to be perfect or brave to love one another."

"Helmut Head?" The edges of Peter's mouth lifted slightly.

"Yes, and?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Nothing." Peter grins slightly.

He races away, not that I blame him since my pep talks aren't the best.

But hey! This was one of the best pep talks I have ever given in my entire life!

I understood that Peter would need time to accept, which was fine with me since I would probably be gone within a few days if I managed to find that teleporting device that the mutants had.

If I could figure out how it worked, I could use it to send myself back to where I came from.

Again, I felt bad about using the mutants, but this was needed to be done.

I had no choice.

But do you really not have any choice, or is it something you're just telling yourself to make yourself feel better? That nagging voice in my head came back.

I had been trying to suppress my thoughts, mostly because I didn't want to hear everything I had to say about myself.

I wish I could be one of those people, who always felt confident about themselves, and yet, I knew I never could.

That was just fucking sad, wasn't it?

I sighed, leaning back into the couch.

My magic started buzzing around me, a sign of my anxiety as I subconsciously started tapping my foot quickly against the floor.

I tried reigning it in again, it was hard the last time my magic had escaped my grasp.

Hecate had told me that suppressing my magic, keeping it bottled up, would just make it build up more and more until it couldn't be contained any more, just bursting right out.

Take a water balloon for an example. You fill it with water, and it gets more and more full, bigger and bigger, until it just.. pops, explodes, and all the water comes spilling out.

Basically, imagine the water as my magic. That was one way to describe magic.

I grasped frantically at the edges of my magic, imagining it like a blanket, holding it close and tight around my magic, wrapped around me. Tucking the corners in and making sure that nothing gets out.

It seemed to work slightly, as the buzzing noise seemed to dim slightly as I sighed in relief.

I didn't want to explode this school, not when I just got here, when I still needed it.

The last time.... was bad. And that was an understatement.

I don't want to get into details, but there were many injuries in the Hermes cabin that day.

I managed to get it contained in time, but it was too late anyways.

Hecate had given me a tip, to release bits and bits of magic to help with all the magic bottled up inside, so that it wouldn't explode unexpectedly, so that some of it was released. But I argued that my method was fine, and that it hadn't caused any problems yet.

Hecate would probably tell me, "I told you so" if I got back.

No, when I got back.

I let out a sad laugh out loud.

Why was I even thinking about this right now? I had other things to deal with.

Like investigating the teleporting device.

Pushing all my problems away for a much, much later time, I stood up, walking away, away from my problems.

Like I always did, and probably always will.

(995 words)

Shorter chapter, I know. But I just wanted write something down since I hadn't written anything down in a long time. The next chapter should be (aka hopefully) longer. Sorry if everything feels forced since life is not inspirational right now.

How are you? 

Author makes an OC: Well, we should give them a few problems since everyone has those.

Author now: Oops. Probably added too much.

In which, I project myself into the OC, yay for me! Low self-esteem issues, constantly manipulating other people, holding terribly large grudges, huh, sounds familiar.

 -𝓐𝓫𝓫𝔂