Chapter 1-2: And You Don't Need Jesus

She laid there with dimly lit eyes, as if trying to stare through her mother instead of at her. She didn't want to see the disappointment. All her life she'd been nothing else. Her father was a Greek fucking god and she ended up being just as boring as any other person. There was nothing Demigod or special about her. 

"You have to want to get better, Holland..." Guinevere whispered.

"You don't think I do? Yes, I'd love to be a cracked out junkie for the rest of my life. I don't expect you to understand addiction so please don't hurt yourself, mom. You're perfect."

Guinevere sighed and she could see her words and how they stung. But she couldn't bring herself to care. It was as if there was nothing more than a void where her heart used to reside. She didn't think it was possible for someone to be this sad, to cry this much. 

To be so consumed with sadness that everything around her was swallowed by the nothingness. Her soul felt mangled and unfamiliar, like driving down a windy back road at midnight with broken headlights.

"Hol, just because I've never done drugs doesn't mean that I am perfect. I don't understand addiction to cocaine, you're right. But I understand what it's like to be addicted to a person."

Addicted to a person? Holland didn't think that was even a real thing before, but now that four years of her life, her shelter, were gone, she desperately wanted to run away from this place and find it. But a part of her she couldn't make sense of felt reprieve from being severed from what had seemed like her life support. 

The withdraws from the drugs had put her body through hell, and the nurses told her that because she was so young, and that because she hadn't been using for that long, her body would bounce back, and in time, she would begin to feel normal again. But God only knew how long that would take. What was normal? What was surviving?

She blinked away the tears that started to form in her eyes.

God why can't I just be stronger? I'm such a fucking mess.

Her mother squeezed her hand before placing a kiss on her forehead.

"I'll be back tomorrow baby. I love you."

"Is dad coming?"

"Yes, he'll be here. I'll make sure of it."

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Her knees rested against her chest as she watched her parents walk in, her mother's arm linked in her father's. While Ares sat across the table, her mom came over and placed a kiss atop her head like she always did. 

"How are you feeling today, honey?" 

"I'm not." 

Guinevere gave her a weak smile before sitting next to her dad that looked less than thrilled to be there. Holland looked at the tile floor below; her eyelids seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. This was the first time her dad had visited her in the six weeks she had been here. She wondered if he only came because her mom made him, and the probability of it didn't even surprise her. She didn't want to look at him, because the empty stare he always gave her was something she could never get used to.

"When are you going to cease with this nonsense and get your life back, Holland?" 

Her eyes didn't elevate from the floor but she could sense her mother shoot Ares a look, disbelief and agitation in her voice when she quickly responded. 

"Ares, for the love of god. Our child is sick and you ask her an insensitive question like that, what is wrong with you?" 

Something proceeded to break inside Holland's already marred insides, but it wasn't her heart. That was already in far too many pieces. It was the wall of numbness that had come with the crippling depression of getting ripped away from everything she had come to know. 

She mustered the energy, and found anger seeping from the cracks in the dam of her sanity. Her chair collided with the table as she pushed it forcefully in. 

"It's fine mom. He doesn't understand." 

She finally looked straight at her father sitting there, her frustration disintegrating into tears as she spoke.

"I'm never gonna be good enough for you am I? You have made me feel like dirt all because I am not like you and I can't change it. It's not my fault and I could give my heart to you on a silver platter and you would complain it wasn't gold. You've never left mom but you left me years ago. You're supposed to be the one guy that would never hurt me and you've done more damage than anyone could ever do. You broke my heart before any stupid boy even got the chance." 

Her voice shook inside her throat but it was pouring out of her and she was going to let it. He deserved to know how he had ruined her. And maybe the whole room didn't need to know, but her pain stricken words reverberated off the walls and every guest, patient, and employee was suddenly aware. It was the first time in weeks that she had felt anything at all that wasn't an overwhelming sorrow and she was holding onto it with any life she had left in her.

Two nurses started to approach the visitation area and she put a hand up.

Don't. 

She brushed passed them but turned around, 

"Screw you. It's not a bad thing to love me."

-------------------

Guinevere followed her into her room a few minutes later and Holland let out an exasperated groan that said that talking was the last thing she wanted to do. 

"Hol...Your dad, he does love you. He jus--" 

"Dad loves you. With everything he is, he loves you Mom. I can see it in his eyes when he looks at you. He doesn't try to hide it or make you feel like you're beneath him. For the past six years, he hasn't shown me any indication that he loves me. Not since I failed him.

So save it, okay. Just stop defending him. I've accepted it and so should you."

Her mother sighed for she knew that deep down, Holland had every right to feel the way she did. Ares didn't know how to be a father, it took him over a year to figure out how to recognize love at all. He came from such a different place, and his father was the Greek god so it's not like he had the best role model. 

"I'm sorry, Holland. I'm so sorry. I love you with all my heart, I just want you to be okay. And I know that your dad wants the same despite how badly he's made you think otherwise." 

"It's not your fault mom. I don't blame you. But we're just never going to have the relationship that you, and me, thought that we could. There's too much damage there and he only has himself to blame, I'm done being the guilty one."

-------------------

The moonlight shined through her window when she woke from her sadness induced sleep, the burst of her limits exhausted her far more than she imagined it would. But she didn't have much energy or desire to do much of anything these days. It was a wonder how her heart still even pumped with how faint her heartbeat felt inside of her chest. 

Am I dead? Is this limbo? Hell? 

Because this is no life. It can't be all there is.

Her fingers ran underneath her eyes after she tugged her hair into a loose ponytail, tracing the bags that had settled there. Resting gave her enough salvation that she changed clothes and slipped a hoodie over them. She shuffled down the hallway to the cafeteria and went through the motions of getting her food before sliding down in a chair to barely eat it. She pushed around the vegetables with her fork, lost in her own foggy thoughts about who she used to be and how she didn't even know who she was anymore. Where was she going from here? 

A boy with pale skin, brown hair, and icy blue eyes sat down across from her and pulled her from her melancholic drift. She looked up from her plate at him, back down, and then back at him again. He had a scar that covered almost half of the right side of his face and he had yet to say anything, like they were just friends casually having a low quality, reheated meal.

 "Knife." 

His voice was low, and it took her by surprise, making her heart jump, "What?" 

"The scar, that's how I got it. Everyone always wants to know." 

"Maybe I'm not everyone." 

His lips curled into a smile, and he caught her gaze before turning back to his dinner, 

"Maybe not."