#pulled from a large unsteady pile of wips

[skylarksilver]

Enter Tutorial

a/n: Twisted Wonderland and Sword Art Online crossover.

A girl with short brown hair and hazel eyes gazed up at the decrepit ceiling, listening to rain strike the roof overhead. The building itself looked to be in shambles, there was a nasty draft stirring dust and bringing in cold air. The fiery hellcat that had been the kick off of her problems of the last few hours was at least warm as he curled against her side. His flaming blue ears gave off a surprisingly small amount of light.

She closed her eyes and let out a long slow breath, the stress and fear she had been holding back coming out now that she felt she was relatively safe and unobserved. 

Alright, let's take stock of things as far as I remember before waking up here with Grim yelling in my face. I finished my exercises, ate dinner and got ready for bed. Then Yui called. We were on the phone together for a while.

Sword Art Online had been a deeply immerse game that wouldn't have made it past the development hurdles without a Mental Health Monitoring AI to ensure the players were not at risk of harming themselves. Yui's growing a degree of sentience thanks to Kirito and Asuna had made her a friend, and peer in some ways. And even now, as a navigation pixie in Alfheim Online, she was very observant.

And remembered dates impeccably well, as did her in-game ‘parents’.

The date was one that would carry weight for Liana for the rest of her life. She had excused herself from playing in Alfheim Online with her friends and she had tried to be subtle about it. But she hadn't been alone with her sadness for more than twenty minutes before she was invited into a voice call with her Alfheim guild. Klein was complaining how Kirito had persuaded some NPC to give them a hugely cut discount on their last supply run. Agil and Leafa, Kirito's sister, were discussing a weapons upgrade.

"Weren't you all gonna be at the new dungeon opening?"

She had been quite confused at what they were doing. And there was a small lull that Yui piped up to fill, speaking from all thir devices at once.

"I noticed tonal shift in your speech patterns, and upon recognizing the date, I thought that being alone was not going to be good for you."

It seemed you could take a Mental Health AI out of the game, but you couldn't change her base code. Liana had felt a soft gratitude fill her at the sound of her friends voices. Asuna was the one who voiced their resolve.

“We weren't going to go into a dungeon without our Beast Master. It'll still be there later.”

And they hadn't played together, but just talked. Kirito had known Jax personally, from the Beta Test., so he would volunter some stories about the amusing accidents that could occurr when you were trying to learn the proper positioning for Sword Skill activation. Or how Jax had, with an absurdly high Stealth skill, pretended to be an NPC for a full two days by hiding his player icon. And Liana found herself telling more about him in life. How the traits he had manifested in Sword Art Online were reflected in his daily life. How he never needed to hear a song more than once before he had the lyrics memorized, pitch perfect. And they all let her talk. In hindsight, it was a skillful way of leading her into opening up.

And she did. With a confession that brought feelings of both shame and guilt.

“You know how some times, you'll pause while doing something and realize you're waiting for the system to identify how to interact with it? Or when you get a cut or scrap and remember that you can bleed again? Well, sometimes just after I wake up, I'll forget the game is over. And think I'm back in Aincrad. And for a second, I'm excited to be there. Not because I wasn't scared, but because when I was there, so was he.”

She hadn't even gotten to go to the funeral. They had all still been trapped in the game when he had been killed by a trap room. Jax's stealth stats had been among the highest in the game, and his trap detection skills made him excellent for guiding parties through the high XP grinding areas that had automatic, resetting obstacles on the 45th floor. She hadn't been high enough level to go with them, so he had left her on the 19th floor where she could work on bonding with one of her favorite companions, a crimson salamander she was coaxing through the steps to fledge out into a dragon.

All his possessions had been transfered to her upon his death. She had found out when she was notified that she had to sort her inventory beecause she didn't have enough room for all of his items. At the same time, Kirito got a message in which Jax asked him, from one elder brother to another, to look out for his sister and make sure she never got anywhere near the clearing party or the guilds that spearheaded that effort.

And through Kirito, Liana met Asuna, Yui, Agil and Klein. And she had someone to catch her. Then and now on the aniversary of his passing. The talk had been good after she vented some of her grief. Peaceful. Agil described his wife's latest frustrations with pregnancy. Klein put his foot in his mouth on three seperate occasions. Sugu and Ayano got into a minor disagreement about the virtues of a K-pop Group whose name she couldn't recall. Yui was flickering around her phone as they played through some cooperative puzzles while listening to everyone. All conversation was now on comfortably light subjects that helped her house feel less dead and silent. That made the day feel like just any other day.

Then Liana heard the distinct sound of hooves on pavement. The jingle of a harness. And that startled and worried her. She had read that coma patients sometimes had moments where they experienced some sensory hallucinations. A side effect of their brains having to self stimulate enough to function once they woke up.

“Does anyone else hear a horse?”

The call had gone silent when Liana asked this.

“Yuu, tell me five things you can touch.”

Agil's voice was deep and soothing, she could hear the worry in it as the eldest of their strange little group brought out what they affectionately called ‘dad mode'. He was prompting her to begin a grounding exercise to focus through whatever halucinations were coming.

“My sheets. My phone.”

She reached out blindly, trying to ignore the ringing hoofbeats that seemed to be coming ever closer. They had never been this strong before and it was somewhat scary to experience.

“My bedframe. The lamp by my bed. My- it's in my room. How is it in my room?”

She remembered seeing the horse looming over her, the smell of the animal and the creak of leather harness the groaning of wooden wheels. The walls of her room had somehow vanished. The horse was rather beautiful. Pitch black, but with liquid dark eyes that looked rather friendly. She felt paralyzed in her bed, gripping the sheets as tightly as she could.

“Stay with us Yuu, it's not real. Yui. Can you call her mom?”

“Right Papa!”

Their young AI friend had transferred herself entirely to Liana's phone and started the emergency dial up for Liana's mother. The SOS that she was having a hallucination and needed help grounding herself again. The black of the horse seemed to fill all her vision and the last thing she heard was her friends trying to get her to respond to them.

She didn't remember anything else after that.

Just waking up in the box.

I don't care if the damn bird calls it a gate. It's a coffin.

Everything that had transpired after that. Meeting Grim, learning about Night Raven College, seeing the little monster set fire to the hall, endangering the strange, hooded and robed throng of teenagers-

It was all too much.

Liana had given her avatars name reflexively when questioned about her identity. Yuu, a neutral name that had endless potential for puns, and had been a private joke between herself and her brother.

She had always enjoyed exasperating him into wordless frustration. So oftentimes the only word he had been able to get out was: ‘You...!’ He had made the first avatar for her and had given it that name as a little homage to her favorite pastime of driving her big brother up the wall as he did to so many others.

Dire Crowley, the headmage, had not impressed her with his portrayed intelligence. But then again, Kaiyaba had hidden under everyone's nose almost from day one during the death game. No one had realized he was there until Kirito forced him to reveal the fact that he had given his avatar Immortal Object status. His bluster and apparent lack of care or competence aside, she doubted that he was as harmless as he pretended.

I'd almost rather get kicked out of here. But if this is some sort of dream, it's probably better to let it play out normally as long as it's not actively traumatizing me. Lucid dreams get unstable and chaotic if I try to control them. And this is more interesting than repeating the same scene over and over again.

But there was one thing keeping her from writing this whole affair off as a dream. Liana held up her hand slowly making a fist. She couldn't see it in this light, but she could feel the bandages that covered it. She had helped smother the flames on a student when Grim had been lashing out. A boy with unreal red eyes and pale hair had not been fast enough to dodge the flames.

The burns on her palm from that experience were real. That pain was real. The blisters, the redness. The sensory transmitters in Alfheim could recreate the pain up to a certain point. But they didn't make the injury look as real as it had seemed when Crowley helped her put a dressing on her hand. There had been no faint pixelization in the air to indicate she had taken damage. That was 100% genuine.

But if that's the case, and I'm not dreaming...

She gave a short downward flick of her index finger at about chest height. A series of five white icons appeared in the air before her.

How can I access the SAO menu?

She knew it was the Sword Art Online menu. Her life had depended on the data that those five little white dots had held and what she had put into them. She knew the strange cool pressure on her finger of selecting an icon. The faintest resistance that swiping through the menus had they wouldn't respond too readily to unpracticed or uncertain movements.

And just like in SAO, the log out button was gone. So was the chat function, the map, the magic list, and her list of pets. She had her inventory, her skills, and that was about it. She returned to the default menu, mouth pressed in a tight line as she tried to think rationally. 

Fact, I definitely get hurt here like I do IRL. Fact. I definitely see and can interact with the menu. Though considering that I was hearing things earlier, I could still be hallucinating. But apparently the horse could also be real so I'm back at square one.

Her other hand tightened on her phone. She would normally have set it to charge, but she doubted this place was even wired for electricity. Listening to Crowley prattle, aka world exposition she was not in a position to pass up, she concluded that most things Earth used electricity for had been superseded by magic and magic stones.

 This whole scenario feels contrived. Like the tutorial of some sort of isekai game. Only the player doesn't miraculously get magic to help them survive.

Liana frowned at that thought, eyeing the menu dots again. She hadn't popped with unknown powers, but maybe... She tentatively reached out and tapped her attributes icon.

The stats of a Lv 73 Beast Master looked back at her and she gave a sigh of pure relief.

I was LV 65 when we escaped Aincrad. The other levels I got in Alfheim after converting my avatar into Summoner. And I'm 100% OK with getting abilities I at least know how to use instead of something entirely new.

She was very certain that if it were not her only way to communicate with her friends, people who knew what her life had been like while she was functionally a vegetable, Liana would never have picked up another game again. It had taken months for her to even try to get back into the multi-player games her brother first taught her to play on. In the end, she had chosen to not allow her joy in it to be stolen by a game designer with a god complex.

 A Beast Master's needed decent physical attributes, and good charisma to interact positively with animals and monsters, but her highest stat was actually her Perception. She had reasoned that people who were well in tune with animals in the real world were those that noticed their behavior and knew how to respond to him.

“That ain't how games work, sis. But...suppose this isn't exactly qualified to be called a game anymore.”

Jax's smiles had been much more rare after the Death Game began. It had taken concerted effort to draw them out of him where they had always come readily before.

High perception, meant a proportionately fast reaction time. Coupled with a high dexterity, it meant Liana had been able to keep up with much higher leveled players, while avoiding their notice most of the time. Jax had still kept her out of harms' way as much as possible while he worked to clear the game.

I can't focus on that right now.

She pulled herself out of her introspection, tapping into her inventory. It still had the items she had last placed in it while in Alfheim, though the text was blurred over some items. And there were other items that were defeinitely from SAO that she did not recall having in there.

It's some weird mashup of the SAO and Alfheim menu? I've got my old class, but the stats, level and skills of my new one.

Liana selected a basic set of clothes, casual wear she had made in SAO for the dirty daily work of tending to her pets and companions. It rested in her hand as she pulled it out of her Inventory, reaching over to the rickety chair, the only other secure piece of furniture in this bedroom, and placed it down carefully.

If you're still there tomorrow, then I can trust that the Menu is real and...and this is some new kind of game. Or my life is now a Gamer story. 

Grim muttered, rolling around by her side to curl into a tighter ball, paws tucked in to conceal his belly. Liana held her phone close to her chest, and accessed her menu to set a timer on how long she wanted to sleep. She wasn't sure what time it was right now. But as pretentious and dramatic a ceremony such as what she had seen, she would be astounded if the sorting was not held at midnight. And the average teenager needed 8-10 hours of sleep, so the following day of classes would hopefully be adjusted as a result.

She set a timer in her menu to wake her in 6 hours. She'd get her optimal amount of sleep once she knew if this world she had found herself in was safe.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The soft chime of her timer made Liana's eyes snap open. Grim groaned, flattening his ears to his head with his forepaws.

“Fglnha....Turn it off...” 

He can hear it too.

She quickly silenced the alarm and closed her menu with a flick of her hand, watching as he went back to snoozing. The sky outside was lightening but still far from proper daylight. She went into her settings and turned on Secrecy. With a high enough Stealth modifier, you could conceal your PC icon, and also your menu alerts from other players. This could be countered with a sufficiently high perception. But something told her that as long as she was discreet and careful, she would be able to hide the menu from most everyone.

Assuming this is a game where the NPC's can see the menu. Or not a game...

Her bandaged hand tightened, the faint throb of pain reminding her that this was not the sort of setting she was used to.

I'd better treat this as it's own death game until I figure out some rules. If this is a tutorial like I think it is, then I should get some more clues. Regardless, I'm playing it safe until I can figure out what to do next.

Liana carefully slipped out of bed to investigate the dorm. The clothes she had laid out the night before, pulled from her inventory, were still on the old chair. Further proof that she was either having a very consistent dream or she had somehow been transported to a new reality. She stuck close to the walls, judging that the floorboards were less creaky there than they were at the center of the floor.

The bathroom she had found the night before was in even worse shape in good light. But she still took advantage of the functional lock to change out of the ornate black and violet robe she had found herself in yesterday. The ceremonial attire that Grim had been so desperate to get his paws on.

Curious, Liana eyed it up and down and activated her little used Appraise skill.

Tight, even stitching. It fit me as though it were tailored. Very fine material, though not one I am familiar with. Possibly actual gold thread. Every student was wearing this last night, so I'm assuming I was a part of a large ritual that this was a component of. And it has hardly wrinkled even though I slept in it. Magical? No way for me to tell.

Storing it in her Inventory would be the easiest thing. She certainly didn't trust the closet or wardrobe. But this was also something she was known to have so if it wasn't easily visible, it could be a bit odd.

I'll have to get used to being called Yuu again.

Her Alfheim friends used her name and her screen name interchangeably. It wouldn't be that big of a stretch to go back to it. Just a different mindset that she had compartmentalized for her own well being.

Yuu didn't see people the same way as Liana did. Liana had never dealt with a genuine threat in her life. She grieved her brother, missed him and clung to her friends across the world to stay sane.

Yuu saw people as potential threats. And though she had accepted Jax's death, she was still angry over his loss. Yuu held onto her comrades like her life depended on it because it did.

There was an ominous sounding chuckle rising from the floor and Yuu looked down sharply to see the top of a hat poking through the floor.

“You're an early riser, prefe-”

One of the ghosts from last night froze upon seeing her, milky eyes going wide with shock. She carefully folded the robe as best she could, resolving to find someplace sheltered with hopefully less dust to keep it in.

“Good morning to you too. I don't think I caught your name last night.’

The ghost remained motionless, gawking at her. She crouched and poked at his face curiously. It felt like waving her hand through mist, only it wasn't wet but some other unique feeling. He flinched and popped wholly into the room, his form losing its distinction in shock.

“You're a girl!”

“Yeah. Guess it wasn't that obvious in the robe, huh?”

The ghost seemed genuinely distressed, wringing his hands and turning this way and that.

“Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. This is going to make some waves.”

Exposition?

“How so?”

Yuu rose to talk with him more readily, keeping her tone level and non accusatory. He seemed to be winding himself up well enough without her help.

“Night Raven College is a boy's school. And you've been presented to the Mirror as a student and accepted as one!”

“But I wasn't sorted in a dormitory.”

He waved his hands impatiently.

“That doesn't matter! Not every teenager that stands before the mirror has a clearly defined soul. Sometimes it takes a bit more time for them to figure out the direction of their ambition, and sometimes it even changes as they are here. The part that makes you a student of Night Raven College is the gate, the robe and the mirror, not the dormitory placement!”

It was part of a ritual. I knew it.

“What does being a student mean as opposed to being a guest?”

“Lots of things. Way too many for just this puff of ectoplasm to remember. Oh, this is going to be so stressful but so very interesting!”

[melancholic-pigeon]

Too Short For Ao3 Fic #3? 4?

SO this is the extended edition of the bonus wip I did with Sally's birthday. The overall fic it belongs to is Extremely Smutty, so I went in and revised out the brief references and I'm posting the family-centric g-rated stuff for anyone who wants that but not the smut! Cough.

Also, I felt bad about missing WIP Wednesday again. Lolsob.

Percy rouses at around eleven PM to a sketch of himself on Jason's pillow. There's a note on the other side. 

I wanted to wake you up to say goodbye, but you looked so comfy I didn't have the heart to. your mom's presents are in the bag by my desk. say hi to everyone for me. I'll call tomorrow anyway.

love you to the moon and back.

-J. ❤

Complete with a little red heart. He doesn't even care that the doodle of him next to it, burritoed in a pile of blankets, includes a little spot of drool— he can tell by the rest of his cartoony, ballpoint features that Jason put it in because he thinks it's cute.

(And by the fact that he's said so, several times.)

Percy gathers up his junk. The cornflower blue sweatshirt he steals goes halfway down his fingers. He's come to accept that at six foot three and counting, Jason is the taller of them and always will be— barring some sort of horrible wood-chipper accident or curse from a grumpy deity. 

Fortunately, there's something about looking up to meet someone's eyes that Percy finds incredibly attractive. He has since Annabeth outgrew him for the first time in eighth grade. 

He heads out in his own jeans and the boxers he packed and the sweatshirt that smells like cinnamon. Once he boards the train, he stands with his arm around a pole and the other holding the bag against his chest, and tries to stay casual and keep the grin off his face.

It's almost midnight when he gets home. His mom, of course, is still awake, so he heads into the living room to greet her.

"My other half says hello."

There's a pile of presents on the coffee table. He puts the bag with the rest of them and sits down, kissing her cheek.

"He didn't have to get me anything." She closes her book and eyes the bag with a fond sigh. "How is he?" 

Percy's the same way she is, always happy to do favors and give gifts, but feeling pretty awkward about receiving them. Jason's even worse, the three of them in an ongoing and circular competition to never let any of it go reciprocated. 

"Working too hard, as always. Pulling As and winning games and barely sleeping to do it. His stepmother's up his ass and his father's a bully, so, you know, news at eleven." He leans his head onto her shoulder. "That's why he gives you stuff. He's trying to show you how much he appreciates you." 

She sighs, and Percy knows it's because she's just as frustrated by the whole thing as he is. 

"He knows I appreciate him too, I hope." 

"Without a doubt." Percy smiles at her, watching as she goes a little pink and smiles back. "You have a talent for making him feel appreciated." 

"He treats my baby like a prince," she says softly. "That's why I appreciate him so much in the first place. How could I do anything else?"

Percy turns his face into her shirt collar, another futile attempt to hide his goofy expression, 

"He really does, doesn't he?"

Holding doors, pulling out chairs, offering an arm on unsteady streets. Jason's never laid his coat over a puddle, but Percy's pretty sure he would, if the option presented itself. 

His mom starts playing with his hair, her fingers light and familiar.

"I'm just happy you're happy, sweetheart."

He knows that feeling too. 

Half asleep from the petting, Percy lets himself be a little babyish. It's after midnight now, which means it's her birthday, and he knows that sometimes she misses when he was Estelle's age and little enough to curl up in her lap. He's way too big for that now, obviously, but he can still slide down the couch and rest his head there. 

"You too, Mama." 

She looks at him, her eyes misty with emotion and almost green in the light.

She's smiling, too. 

She smiles a lot, these days.

—

In the morning, Paul makes coffee while Estelle helps unwrap the avalanche of presents. She's at the age where ripping paper makes her squeal with hysterical laughter, which worms its way into Percy's heart and melts it into pudding. 

Several of them are from Percy's friends, including a handbound book of original recipes from Leo, a lovely silver bracelet inset with mother-of-pearl that Beckendorf made himself, and a huge sheathed knife with a matching decorative handle from Clarisse. The last one makes his mom snort as she gets up to put it on the bookshelf, out of reach of curious toddler hands. 

"Decorative. Sure." 

"I bet she'd teach you how to use it if you asked." 

"I know how to use a bowie knife, dear. Your father and I used to catch and cook our own fish when we went camping."

"Which reminds me, he still hasn't taken me out," Paul cuts in, frowning. "I've been saving up dad jokes and embarrassing stories for four years."

"I'll bug him about it the next time we talk," Percy promises. "It's probably the ADHD." 

"Do you want me to bug you about bugging him?" 

"If you haven't set something up by blueback season, yeah." 

Percy and Paul went in on a pound of jasmine tea, which his mom reaches for next. She immediately asks for a cup— it's one of two days out of the entire year where she lets other people wait on her, for a change, and even that took a lot of cajoling. 

Paul makes the tea, since Percy usually scalds the leaves and it turns out tasting like grass. She probably wouldn't complain anyway, but it's her birthday, and she deserves to have the best tea that can be made in their kitchen. 

"Is the last bag from Jason?" Paul sets the mug on a coaster in the middle of the coffee table, and Percy scoops the baby into his lap so she doesn't try to grab it. She mashes her tiny hand against his cheek.

"And Thalia. I'm not sure if they went in on stuff or he just packed them both in one bag to make it easy." 

Either is a possibility. He watches as his mom reaches in and pulls out a large wrapped frame, Thalia's spiky handwriting answering the question. 

Whatever's inside, it makes her shut her eyes and exhale deeply through her nose. 

"Please pass on that I am absolutely furious."

She turns the frame around. An autographed vinyl EP of Sign O' the Times by Prince— one of the albums Percy grew up on, though she skipped a number of the songs when he was little. Thalia must have spent a fortune on it. 

"That woman is incredible," Paul breathes, lightly touching the glass. "How does she get this stuff?" 

"See!"

"She has friends in high places." Percy grins as Estelle reaches for the album, and holds her over the glass so she can touch it too. "She's also really good at barter chains."

His mother shakes her head, but he can tell how delighted she is— the two of them have spent hours animatedly talking about music, Thalia hanging on every word and groaning with jealousy over the concerts his mom went to in the eighties. 

"I know exactly where I'm going to put it." 

Thalia got her a turntable for her fortieth birthday last year, as well as a full set of replacements for every worn-out record in their collection— and had the originals framed too, since they had sentimental value. They're currently occupying the better part of two walls of his mom's study. 

There's a blank spot by her bookshelf, right underneath the first copy, that the autographed album will fit into perfectly. Percy grins. 

"I'll hang it up for you later."

She doesn't argue. There's only Jason's left, his careful print written out across the same paper Thalia used. The crinkling draws Estelle's attention, and she gleefully reaches over to help tear it off.

Their mom gasps at what's inside and puts a hand to her mouth, her eyes going bright.

It's a watercolor portrait of Percy and Estelle, laughing by the shoreline. She's dressed in a little bucket hat, a ruffled swimsuit patterned to look like a clownfish and the coolest shades in the world— sparkly blue frames shaped like seashells that he kind of wishes he could get in his size. He's in a wetsuit, having spent the morning surfing, and he's holding onto her hands so she can jump at the waves. In the distant background is the Montauk lighthouse.

It's beautifully done, like everything else Jason's ever put to paper, but Percy's never choked up like this over one of them.

"You remember that, Beluga? That was on my birthday, when you came and visited me and Jason at the beach."

"Beach?" she asks, expectant. Paul bursts into laughter, sounding as rough-voiced as Percy feels.

"You're your mother's daughter, sweet pea."

"Beach!" Estelle insists. Percy noses her pudgy cheek.

"It's too cold to swim, baby." His mom's eyes are sparkling, still a little teary. He can see Estelle in the smile on her face. "But we could go for a walk and visit." 

"Brunch first." Paul kisses her— Percy averts his eyes, wrinkling his nose at his sister to make her giggle again— and gets up, heading back into the kitchen. 

It's a lovely way to spend a late morning. Pale blue araucana eggs courtesy of Grover's new hens, a blueberry coffee cake from Nico by a fantastic hole in the wall in Hell's Kitchen, Paul's signature home fries made with blue potatoes and seasoned to perfection; all of it delicious.

Jason calls while Percy's doing the dishes. After his deep, resonant performance of the happy birthday song, the five of them chat on speakerphone for a little while, though he has to excuse himself pretty quickly to keep banging through his reading. 

"Maybe next year," Percy sighs. His mom puts her hand on his hip, then crouches down to help Estelle with her light-up sneakers. 

"He's always welcome for a rain check."

"He's always welcome, period," Paul adds. For the second time, Percy gets dangerously close to sniffling. 

Montauk is a little far for a day trip, so they head to Brighton Beach instead. Estelle's shrimpy legs get tuckered out more quickly than the grownups' do, so Percy ends up carrying her on his hip, snuggled into his jacket to block the chilly breeze. She points at seagulls, shouting triumphantly every time. 

"More bird!"

"That's right. A whole flock of 'em."

They watch for a while as the gulls fight over a discarded pizza crust. Then Percy feels an arm around his back and a head against his shoulder.

"I don't know how I got so lucky," his mother murmurs, barely audible over the rushing of the waves.

Percy's eyes sting. 

For most of his life, her birthdays had been spent without fanfare. He was rarely actually there for them anyway, and Gabe complained so much it was easier to just ignore the day and focus on survival instead. 

She'd been triaging like that since before she even met his dad, keeping herself afloat when nobody seemed to care if she drowned. It would have been easy to lie down and give up. Percy's pretty sure he would have, in her place. 

He turns to hug her with the obligatory proclamation of a Stella Sandwich. He catches Paul's eye over her shoulder, and gets a wide, sentimental grin in response. 

"Luck's got nothing to do with it," Percy tells her, leaning his cheek against the top of her head while his sister wriggles with delight between them. 

"Listen to our son," Paul adds. "He's very wise, as you raised him to be. This is all on you, honey." 

Within moments, she's surrounded by her whole family on all sides, and Percy has another arm around his back, and he's getting a little choked up over it all. 

When she first started dating Paul, back when Percy was still in middle school, she'd spent weeks all aflutter. It was the happiest he'd ever seen her at the time. They'd sit outside and work on her car together, and she'd slip into song like a grease-stained fairytale princess without even thinking about it. 

Seeing them interact is like cool water on a burn, Paul's devoted kindness soothing a lifetime of sitting back and watching people treat her like dirt. He worships her, just like she deserves and long overdue.

"I love you," she says, tearful and muffled in someone's shoulder. "All of you, more than anything." 

"Love Mama," Estelle replies, and that's it— Percy's blubbering.

It'll never undo the damage, but it's about time she got a chance to heal and thrive. 

-here in our bed, chapter 7, ~6200 words