Percy Jackson

After talking to the kids, I went to talk with Mom and Paul. It's her day off, I think, and Paul's lunch hour. Propping my phone up, I pressed the button to video call both of them and worked on a painting. I think I'll be doing both art and conversational therapy.

"Percy!" Paul exclaimed as he answered the call. "hey, kiddo, you called at a good time. What's up?"

"Percy, sweetie! Hi!" Mom said as she answered from home and I smiled a little bit. It's been a hard week, and it's only Thursday. "What's going on?"

"Not too much, I just got home from an appointment," I explained, sighing. "I just got done talking with Nico and the kids about it, so I figured I should call and talk to you guys about it, too."

"About what?" Mom asked, of course worried as can ever be. "are you doing alright, sweetie?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah, I am." I assured her as I tried to color match something that I wasn't quite getting. "I guess it's nothing like surprising, I just never really got it checked out until yesterday and stuff came back positive so they wanted me to do a follow up today."

"What on Earth did you test positive for?" Paul asked me, and I shrugged.

"A few things." I told them. "until I find a therapist who will believe anything about Dad, they have me listed with psychosis. So that's cool. They didn't actually find it in the scan, they just heard about my dad and so they put it on there. Outside of that, I actually tested positive for depression, PTSD, and panic. So... I talked to a psychiatrist today and they're trying to set me up to meet a few different therapists. Art therapists, conversation therapists, the works. So... Yeah. I don't know, I figured that you guys would probably want to know. So if it ever shows in Estelle, it could be genetic. I had to take like 15, 20 minutes explaining to my doctor that Luana's wasn't genetic because she's adopted. He didn't believe me when I said she was adopted. So... Yeah. I figured you guys would want to know sooner rather than later."

They agreed that it was nice to hear about before they'd have to hear for a bad reason.

Which, they almost did. But they don't need to know about that.

I still haven't told my mom about what Gabe did to me, so that's probably bad. I'm sure any therapist I talk to won't like that. Finn knows a little about it, but that's about it. He knows that it happened on occasion. Just not how often those occasions were. I've kept Luana away from the subject.

I just don't want them to be too worried about me.

•••
Finn Jackson

These weeks between visiting Mutti are getting more intense.

"Hi, sweetie," Mutti said, giving me a hug as we sat down and ate some lunch. "how's yours week been?"

"It's been... Intense." I told her, shrugging. "I don't know, I'm just kind of worried."

"About?"

"Vati," I told her. "He didn't have the best week and like... He just got diagnosed with depression and a few other things. He was sort of suicidal on like, Tuesday. Saw a doctor and got diagnosed Wednesday. Told us about it Thursday. Not about the whole... Just that he was diagnosed. I overheard him on Tuesday and he says not to worry and that he's fine, but that doesn't..."

"But your father never wants anyone to worry," Mutti responded, understanding where I was coming from. "yeah, he uh... He scared me a few times when we were together. He was still having really had nightmares at that time, though. I think he was more afraid to know back then, though. He was already going through a lot mentally, I think had somebody told him he was depressed he would've gone off the deep end and killed himself. He seemed a lot healthier when he was here and we talked. He still has problems, but he knows how to deal with them. Most of the time. Is he going to go and try therapy out?"

I nodded my head.

"Yeah," I confirmed for her. "he's a little iffy about it because of Poseidon and that whole thing, but outside of that he seems pretty alright with it. He did admit that he should've started this 20 years ago. He knew there were problems. He just never got around to it and then he had to raise me. So uh, yeah. I'm just like, worried."

"Which is okay," Mutti insisted, giving me another hug. "but I promise that he's going to be okay. Especially if Nico is there with him. Your dad has gone through a lot of shit, a lot of which I never got to find out. But if he's willing to go to therapy and open up about it, that's really good."

"It is, yeah," I agreed, nodding my head. "I just worry still. Not as much, but..."

"Yeah, you got that from your dad," Mom agreed. "I promise, he's going to be alright."

Nodding my head, I knew she was right. I needed to trust Vati more than I was.

She calmed me down about the subject, though, before talking about some art stuff until our time ran up and she had to go back to her thing as I had to go back to mine.

I just want him to be alright, you know? Vati does so much for us and he always has and I never really considered that he was always so busy with us that he never made time for himself. A day off, therapy, a weekend away, nothing like that. We would go and stay with people for the night, as we got older, for a weekend. I once stayed with Oma for like, a week during the summer.

Vati was always doing something, though. The only time he ever took time off was after Nico's suicide scare. Because he had to.

So hopefully therapy will become his break. Nico will give him a break. Both of them have been single parents their entire time as parents, I'm sure adjusting is hard, and they're adjusting to how things are run.