It's all my state of mind... (Open)

[Ryan Simons]

Aria Hale was staring at him from across the beach, her arms crossed and a scowl across her face. "Yeah, you show that sand. I’m sure it won’t be mean to you again." A wave from behind her roared up; Ryan went to open his mouth, but couldn't say anything. He couldn't move; he couldn't do anything. Then it crashed and Aria was gone. Her scream vibrated around his head as a new figure rose up out of the sand. "Apparently you lost the third one of your party, probably by some careless mistake of yours..." There was something heavy in his right hand, something weighing him down. Ryan couldn't look at it, he could only see the short male infront of him. Third? His mind went in slow motion; he felt so languid. What about a second? He felt so jumpy... then a sound of someone approaching. Ryan turned around without thinking and threw whatever was in his hand. In that moment: a sword. "Little buddy, we-" her words were cut short as the sword hit her; Ryan's blood froze cold. His eyes were finally allowed to move, but he didn't want them to now... He looked down the see the eternally opened eyes of Avery Reynolds.

Ryan's head hit the back wall and his eyes snapped open. He panicked for a few seconds before realizing that Avery was okay. They were back at Camp. Just to make sure he went to move his left arm. Pain shot straight up it, making him wince slightly. Yup, back to reality. As always, he had taken to healing himself; he didn't deserve to be healed by the kids whose sister he killed... which made him remember the nightmare he had just had. Exactly why Ryan never wanted to sleep. He was getting this nightmare, and variants of it, whenever he shut his eyes. The demigod hadn't had proper sleep since... well, when Kath showed up, but at least he could cram a few hours then. Having near zero hours now was starting to take its toll, and it was showing. Ryan just didn't want to go to sleep though, it was mind against body, and his body had just won a few minutes ago.

Why am I here...? The Arena. One of the places he used to like before the quest happened. Fighting was one of the last thoughts on his mind right now. He had gotten a sword for his right side since coming back, but wasn't looking forward to using it any time soon. That time getting it was the only successful time of shutting his feelings off. Every other time, he was pretty much a wreck. People had started coming up to him, and Ryan would just ignore them. He hadn't said anything about the quest. All they knew was that three had left and two had come back. The Hermes Cabin got back a dispirited, concussed, wrist broken sister, all Ryan's fault. At least she was alive, but Ryan felt like he had killed her to an extent.

Ryan looked across the arena without even seeing it. Before he had practically lived here, now he just didn't want anything to do with it. It was dark. Aria was looking at him from her sitting position on the arena floor. "You’re not one of them, you know," she said. They had been talking about monsters and psychos. The arena lightened again. Ryan looked down into the arena, almost expecting to see her. No Aria. There would never be. It was just another moment. Another memory out of guilt. "You were wrong..." he muttered to no one in particular. Maybe her ghost could hear him or something. Gods knew he needed a good whack over the head now...

OOC: Trying to get active o.o
I hope it was okay that I used dialogue from Avery, Aria and Deimos, if you want me to take it out just say so.
IC: 646

[Avery Reynolds]

It was honestly becoming pretty damn difficult to keep Avery Reynolds away from the Arena.

Technically, she really wasn't supposed to be doing anything except rest her wrist and get some much needed sleep, and she definitely wasn't supposed to be training. But it didn't surprise any of Avery's healers when they found her ignoring their advice and out training like everyone else, maybe even harder, to try and get herself to work with her left hand as opposed to her right, which until it was healed, was essentially useless. Pain shot up her arm every time she used the wrong muscles in her hand, and it sure as hell hurt to move it period. Which was why it was now in a sling, securely wrapped so as to keep the broken wrist as close to her body as possible.

But trying to learn to fight with only her left hand hadn't been going so well, which explained the reason why Avery was so adamant to train. After all, she was very determined to be in fighting condition when Deimos and Phobos showed up at their doorstep, as she was convinced they would any day now. If what Deimos had said on their quest was true, then they probably didn't have much time. And she refused to be caught off guard, and she refused to be helpless. Which, if those two showed up now with their army, she probably would be, and in turn she'd be dead. And while Avery was pretty sure that she deserved to die, and that nobody would miss her when she was gone, the instinct to survive (and to just spite everyone who'd rather see her dead), was just too great for her to resist. So, here she was, trying to teach herself to fight with her left hand so she wouldn't get skewered when the gods of midgetdom came to town.

That and, in reality, she needed something to keep her distracted. She, like Ryan, was having far too much trouble sleeping, and the daughter of Hermes had been doing everything in her power over the past week or so to keep herself from going to sleep anyway. Training played a huge role in that, no matter how much her new 'caretaker', Azrael Everett, disapproved of her overexerting herself. But he just didn't understand. Or maybe he did, and was just convinced to keep her from doing what she felt she needed to do. Either way, Avery took every chance she got to come down to the Arena to try and train herself.

But today, when she arrived, she found that she wasn't alone. She hadn't spoken much to Ryan Simons since their arrival back at camp, but it wasn't because she was avoiding him. No, Avery didn't really avoid anyone, but it was something that just happened kind of naturally. Upon seeing Ryan, though, she decided to approach him. After all, who would understand her troubles better than the guy who was actually with her through everything? The guy who kept watch over her when she had the potential to go into a coma? The guy who saved her life? Without realizing it, Ryan Simons had become one of the very few people in this world that Avery actually trusted.

"I don't know what you're talking about, little buddy, but I'm never wrong, so whatever knowledge you have on the subject is invalid," she said rather bluntly from behind him, raising an eyebrow. "And the Arena isn't for brooding, you know."

[Ryan Simons]

Before the quest, it was odd to see Ryan anywhere but the arena. Now, however, it was different. He hadn't been in here since coming back to Camp. The fifteen year old exhaled in slight frustration, his memory wouldn't help him figure out the exact reason why he had come in here. He finally gave up and decided that it was out of habit: it was the only reason that Ryan could make any sense of. As if his brain could make sense of anything anymore. He felt like it was fried beyond reason; anytime he tried thinking straight, it would result in him just remembering everything that happened on the quest all over again. It was just a constant tape playing and replaying in his head: the boat, the crash, the water, the dream, Deimos, Aria, Avery, the monsters, the mirage. Everything in reoccurring, scarily realistic detail.

Ryan's eyes scanned the once familiar arena. He knew he should really be training. Even more so than the others. Training to be able to fight in a war that he had started single handedly, but he just couldn't. He was pretty sure that everyone in Camp would rather him dead, and quite personally, he did think that he deserved to die because of all the crap that he had created. Plus, he'd probably just get drop dead from sleep and food deprivation. Along with no sleep, Ryan hadn't been doing that well with getting food down into his stomach. He had eaten, but the food had been tasteless; along with the sensation that he'd throw it straight back up, eating hadn't exactly been successful. Just like his entire life.

He exhaled, telling himself that he would get up and try to fight, but with no avail. Ryan had tried, but with no luck. If he tried fighting, he'd probably end up mauled. He deserved it, he knew he did, but he didn't exactly want it to happen again. The last time he felt like this, he had gotten forced into fighting, and then it had happened. Here, he had a choice and it was probable that no one would full out force him to fight. Whether he liked that or not, he wasn't sure. Unconsciously, he turned his right palm up; his grey-blue eyes trailed along an old scar. It was crisscrossed with another... and another. He really had these many?

Ryan was still trying to make his heart rate go back down when Avery's voice reached his ears. Little Buddy. Ryan would probably sooner respond to that than his actual name, providing it was only Avery calling him that. It was good to hear her voice again, but it also shot his heart rate back up as he turned around to look at her. There she was: alive. Physical evidence that he hadn't killed her, but he still couldn't shake the image of her lying dead, mostly because he had been the one to kill her. Avery. The only person in the world he trusted. She had saved him and stuck through his quest with him. She was truly his only family. If something happened to her, especially by him, he honestly didn't know what he'd do.

"H-hi Avery..." he greeted, trying to keep his face blank. Ryan knew he had near zero face control right now, so he didn't exactly know how successful he was being at an expressionless face. He gave his head a slight shake. "Nah... it-it was... is... pretty valid," he muttered, gazing at a point on the arena wall. "I know..." he sighed. "I-I guess I just came here out of habit." Right. His filter was gone too. He had almost forgotten about that.

[Avery Reynolds]

Something was bugging her little buddy. Avery could tell. But, then again, she completely understood. Out of everyone in this camp, there was probably nobody she knew better at this point than Ryan Simons, son of Ares. Not even her old brother, Luke, and that was saying something. Ave was a reasonably intuitive person in certain situations, and she was fairly attune to how other people acted and their attitudes. By no means was she the best person at deciphering others' moods, but Ave wasn't stupid about it either.

Avery bit her lip, unsure of how to proceed. She and Ryan had been through a lot together over the past few weeks, if her broken wrist that was currently strapped to her chest meant anything. Or the dull ache she still had in the back of her head every once in a while. Or the nightmares. But she shrugged those off. Nightmares only came when she slept, and she'd been fairly successful at avoiding them lately, as the dark rings under her eyes testified to. But unlike Ryan, though, Avery was having no trouble eating. Heck, she'd probably eaten enough food in the past few days to make her overweight, but she was working out and training so much that all the work she did balanced out the food. The only thing that Avery had a lack of these days was sleep, now that she thought about it.

Because, the irritating thing was, was that she was almost never alone. Like the people around her were terrified that she was going to spontaneously combust, or have a mental breakdown. Granted, Ave had already broken down, the day they got back, and she was trying to recover. But, as she looked down at Ryan, she realized that she was really the only one. And that in itself sparked some irritation in her. "Look here, little buddy, I know things are tough. But no, it's not valid. Knowing you, you were probably thinking something self-defamatory, which is exactly why I said that. If you need an intervention, here it is. Get over yourself, little buddy. Don't start the, 'but this is all my fault' argument, because it's bull. And I won't hear it without punching you." By this point, her hands were on her hips and she was glaring down at Ryan with anger in her chocolate brown eyes. If she was moving on from this, she expected him to as well.

Because, yes, this quest had been hard on her. It was her first one, and what happened? They lost a demi-god, she got a concussion, they started a war, and she broke her wrist and almost died. Their quest was probably one of the worst in Camp Half-Blood history, and Avery had accepted that. A war was coming, and everyone had to buck up and get ready for it, even if half of them didn't believe it. Avery was preparing. And damn it, she was not going to lose Ryan to this war, which meant she expected him to be doing his best to survive it.

"Look, you need to try and move on from this. It's not the end of the world. Or, at least, it won't be if you and I can actually band together and save it." Almost as if it was the natural thing to do, Avery just kind of plopped down next to Ryan and looked out over all the kids training in the Arena.

[Ryan Simons]

In all honesty, something had always bugged Ryan. From the moment he set foot in Camp, all the way up to the present day. He had been able to hide it for three years, but now it was becoming sort of apparent. All because his "I Hate the World and Everyone in it" mask had shattered. Thank you quest. Camp bothered him, but not for the reason that everyone may of thought. He was scared of it, honestly. It was big, full of people, and full of people that could (and would) actually care. People like Avery, Charlie and Nike. Care that he didn't deserve... and that thought had been ingrained in his head long before Aria and sank to the bottom of the ocean. Avery had probably figured him out by now; being on a quest with eachother and going through what they had would do that. He was just a scared, upset, stubborn kid who would automatically think that everything was his fault. It had been for twelve years, so changing locations wouldn't change that, right? Apparently it did.

A small part of him wanted to pick up fighting again. Fighting was in his blood; it was all he had known in his childhood and during Camp life. More than anything, he wanted to stay around to be with Avery and to kill the midget who they had met on the island. Avery was his only real family; as of now, he'd defend her to the death. As for Deimos, Ryan knew he was a god, but he didn't exactly care at this point. A small part of his brain was fixating on murdering him; immortal or not. He had gone to get a replacement sword... so that was a step, right? Then again, his weapons wouldn't be much use if the minority side of his brain lost. Ryan exhaled and looked up at Avery as she started to talk. Her lifeless face was still faintly flashing in his mind. She looked ticked, and he didn't blame her.

Ryan looked at Avery as she started speaking to him. Yeah, she had pretty much figured him out. "You-you know me too well..." he murmured. "Crazy... what a few weeks can do," he sighed, shaking his head. No one is ever prepared for the moment that could change a life. A few months ago, he didn't think that he would trust anyone; didn't think that he would be having a civil conversation with Avery Reynolds; didn't think that anyone would come close to figuring him out; and he most defiantly didn't think that he wouldn't be fighting. "Alright... alright..." he muttered. Personally, he still did think it was his fault; he also thought that he actually needed a bit of roughing up to get himself back in fighting order, but he didn't exactly want it at the same time. Getting roughed up when refusing to fight, and not having the will to defend hurt. He knew it all too well, and he had the scars to prove it.

Avery was right. He had to just buck up, pull himself together and fight. He took a deep breath. "O-okay..." Ryan exhaled resolutely, half shutting his eyes. "I-I will try," he promised. He'd take Avery bashing him on fighting versus Kath any day. Now it would probably happen; it was Avery that he promised, and just like he said that he'd wake her up, Ryan would probably follow through with this too. Plus, this time, he had something to fight for again. He had Avery. He had Midget. "Fine, fine. Point taken..." he murmured, starting to mull her words over. He watched Avery sit down next to him. Before, the closeness would of bothered him, but now, especially with her, he was fine with it. Ryan half sighed and followed her eyes to the other kids training. Yeah, he should be with them; he should probably start practicing shooting projectiles, sparring, and all that other good stuff.

For some reason, that sparked a reminder in him. "Maybe we can... and you can use this to help you." Ryan almost used his left arm, but stopped as soon as it moved an inch. He half hissed in pain and then went to use his right arm instead. The demigod fumbled with his right hand to reach his left pocket. When he withdrew his hand, he had Avery's other throwing knife that had shrunken back into a hair pin; he extended it to its rightful owner. He remembered grabbing it from the ground... when she had almost died. When Ryan thought that he was going to loose her.